Swimming in the Dark by Tomasz Jedrowski

(2020 Harper Collins)

I lived in Poland for four years, and although that was unexpected, I found myself truly falling for the country. The language, with its consonant-laden nouns and verbs of prodigious length, intrigued me, and the good weather, which arrived in April and stayed until September, I found inspiring. The cerulean skies, bright sunshine, leafy streets, and garden plots of Warsaw drew me in like a magnet, while the rare surviving pre-war buildings, reconstructed Old Town, Art Deco houses, and even the Communist era architecture, were like the set of an intriguing foreign film where I had a starring role.

Cycling Outside Warsaw Photo credit: Kay Brownsey

Even now, the story of Poland, proud and tragic in turn, continues to occupy a place in my imagination, which is why I leapt at the prospect of Tomasz Jedrowski's 2020 debut novel, Swimming in the Dark.

When I picked up the 191-page volume, I was struck by its brevity. A short book makes me nervous. I fear the author either does not have enough to say or that the book will be so good I’ll feel shortchanged by its pith. 

Swimming in the Dark is the coming of age story of Ludwig, who grew up in Wroclaw with his mother and grandmother. A young man during 1981’s Marshal Law, he moves to Warsaw and falls deeply in love with Janusz, who has ambitions to better his life by moving up in the Party.

It’s an understatement to say that throughout the course of history, the Poles have endured various eras of repression. Life during Marshal Law was just one more example. Although homosexuality was decriminalized in Poland in 1932, widespread homophobia has always existed there, and this novel depicts the paranoia of the Marshal Law period.

Unfulfilled love and its attendant sadness are at work throughout this novel, as is a pernicious powerlessness that plagues Ludwig. This is broken at times by occasional appearances of intoxicating attraction and simple kindnesses.

For those of us who don't read Polish sufficiently well, this English language novel affords a glimpse into life during Poland's Communist era, with its long queues for food, hyper-vigilance toward criticism of the Party, and significantly, the persecution of homosexuals. To think that it depicts life in Warsaw just forty years ago boggles the mind.

Swimming in the Dark’s author, Tomasz Jedrowski, 34, was born in Germany to Polish parents and currently lives in France. To me, his writing brings to mind Hemingway and Fitzgerald. Perhaps it's Ludwig's longing and his languishing love that recalls the work of those authors. 

In the acknowledgments Jedrowski says it took him seven years to birth this book. I hope the next one is of a shorter gestation. I lived in Warsaw some thirty years after this story takes place, yet the novel reflected some of what I still perceived about Warsovian life: a certain air of oppression, a lack of economic mobility, a certain watchfulness. 

In the end, Swimming in the Dark, took my breath away. I didn't even mind that it was a slender volume. You can buy a copy here.