Swimming in the Dark: A Poetic Literary Debut about First Love and Political Divides

Jedrowski mustered his good command of poetic language, captivating romance and conflict, and engaging discourse of homosexuality in authoritarian, Communist Poland. He’s great at giving off a cinematic feel for its historical context, landscapes of the foreign past, and characters subverting the corrupt system. A few bangers from the 70’s adds to the vibe as well. I liked how effectively written his characters are, especially our protagonist Ludwik, and his creative use of first and second person narratives. I am impressed coming to know that this is Tomasz Jedrowski’s debut novel. I look forward to his future works.

It’s an interesting read. Although we don’t really need yet another gay coming-out/coming-of-age story, the difference here is the compelling context of 1980s communist Poland. The writer offers an insightful take on why an everyday Pole might have bought into the system, while at the same time his lover wholly rejected it. The novel can be didactic and repetitive at times, the dialogue sometimes stilted, the grammar iffy in several places, the characters testing believability, but overall I’d recommend it.

In his debut novel, SWIMMING IN THE DARK (2020) author Tomasz Jedowski (born in 1985 in the Federal Republic of Germany) writes of first love set during the political turmoil of Poland in the early 1980s as Communist leaders began an increasing desperate and despotic attempt to hold on to power. The political setting of the novel plays an important role in the events surrounding the lives of the novel’s two main characters: twenty-two-year-old Ludwik Glowacki and a fellow student, Janusz. The two first meet as university students at a summer agricultural camp and although gay and closeted, pretty much inexperienced, and more than a bit cautious, Ludwick immediately is attracted to the masculine Janusz who Ludwik sees as “a prophecy I was unable to read.” Jedowski adopts an interesting and telling narrative technique for SWIMMING IN THE DARK. Ludwik is the book’s first-person narrator throughout and the novel is written as a letter to Janusz describing Ludwik’s life before meeting Janusz and, more importantly, detailing their lives after they meet. As early as the second page of the novel Jedowski lets readers know the relationship between the two central characters is, for one reason or another, doomed as he has Ludwik write, “I don’t know whether I ever want you to read this, but I know that I need to write it. Because you’ve been on my mind for too long. Ever since the day, twelve months ago, when I got on a plane and flew through the thick layers of cloud across the…