Swimming in the Dark

Marvellous, precise, poignant writing; the reader is happy to be overwhelmed. The highest talent at work -- SEBASTIAN BARRY An enthralling debut -- TASH AW * TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT * A remarkable, beautiful tale ... Utterly new and entirely credible ... This book radiates sensuality, humour, and human truths … Swimming in the Dark is sensual and immersive, and Ludwik’s sentimental education is so well described that the reader is left wanting more. You won’t want to miss it * LITERARY REVIEW * Elegant, compelling and full of melancholy beauty ... I will keep it on my shelves alongside novels by Alan Hollinghurst, Edmund White and other classics in the gay canon * EVENING STANDARD * One of the most astonishing contemporary gay novels we have ever read … extraordinarily beautiful, enrapturing and poignant … Erotic, mesmeric, heart-rending and brutal, this is a masterpiece * ATTITUDE * A young Polish author who writes rather miraculously in English, of which he has magisterial and frankly, Conradian command * Guardian, Books of the Year * New Year, New Writers … Swimming in the Dark is an unforgettable debut about youth, love, and loss - and the sacrifices we make to live lives with meaning -- Foyles.co.uk Beautifully judged, very moving, passionate ... I was completely gripped -- PATRICIA DUNCKER Captivating both for its shimmering surfaces and its terrifying under-deep. I began reading, and soon realized I wouldn’t be doing anything else that day. I needed to see these boys, these lovers, through to the end. Tomasz Jedrowski is a remarkable writer, alive to the ramifications of history and politics, in which the violence of a corrupt state can never fully stamp out the flourishing of beauty, grace and resistance -- JUSTIN TORRES, bestselling author of We the Animals The surprise of Swimming in the Dark lies in its intimate ambivalence - that it captures the pleasures of everyday life behind the Iron Curtain as well as the privations. A beautiful, captivating love story that deepened my understanding of life in communist era Poland -- Jessica Shattuck, New York Times bestselling author of The Women in the Castle A lyrical exploration of the conflict between gay love and political conformity. Jedrowski is an authentic new international star -- EDMUND WHITE