by Stanislaw Ignacy Witkiewicz (Author), Louis Iribarne (Translator)
Witkiewicz's 1927 masterpiece, made famous in Polish dissident and Nobel laureate Czeslaw Milosz's The Captive Mind, is one of the most unforgettable depictions of the tensions and trade-offs between ideological loyalty and individual conscience in world literature. Futuristic, experimental, and remarkably prophetic, Insatiability traces the choices of a young Pole as his divided nation both opposes and welcomes a communitarian invasion from the east offering a narcotic that both removes anxieties and induces obedience. An anti-Utopian classic, it foretold the irresoluble and sometimes deadly choices that faced Eastern European thinkers, writers, and politicians during the years of Soviet domination.
Author Biography
STANISLAW IGNACY WITKIEWICZ (1885-1939) was a Polish novelist, poet, and playwright. An ardent nationalist, Witkiewicz killed himself in 1939 upon hearing that the Soviet Army had invaded Poland.
LOUIS IRIBARNE is a professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures at the University of Toronto. He has translated several works by Polish writers such as Gombrowicz, Milosz, and Schulz.