The 34-year-old author, who lives in the French countryside an hour outside of Paris, was born in Northern Germany to Polish parents. Jedrowski prose captures the strain of such desires, alongside heady moments of freedom where “the shame inside me melted like a mint on my tongue, hardness releasing sweetness.” Here, in the heavily surveilled, economically flailing capital, worker revolts and brutal government crackdown form the backdrop to Ludwik’s search for love and possibility while living in fear of being discovered. The sharing of this book, however, sparks an intense, carnal affair between the two young men that continues when they return to Warsaw. Homosexuality is forbidden in the Communist country, and James Baldwin’s seminal gay novel is all but banned. During a hot, laborious summer at an agricultural camp in 1980s Poland, the protagonist, Ludwik, reluctantly allows a handsome stranger named Januszto borrow his copy of Giovanni’s Room. A similar exchange sets off an illicit romance of a different kind in Tomasz Jedrowski’s devastating debut novel Swimming in the Dark (William Morrow). The lesson here is clear: life often takes its cues and permission directly from art. In Inferno, while on a stop in the second circle of hell, Dante hears the story of a woman who fell into an illicit romance with her brother-in-law after they started reading a romance novel together. Coat, Shirt, Pants, and Shoes by Balenciaga.
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