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    Swimming in the Dark: A Novel
    Swimming in the Dark: A Novel
    Swimming in the Dark: A Novel
    Audiobook6 hours

    Swimming in the Dark: A Novel

    Written by Tomasz Jedrowski

    Narrated by Will M. Watt

    4.5/5

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    About this audiobook

    “Imagine Call Me By Your Name set in Communist Poland and you'll get a sense of Jedrowski's moving debut about a consuming love affair amidst a country being torn apart.”  — O Magazine, LGBTQ Books That’ll Change the Literary Landscape in 2020

    “Captivating both for its shimmering surfaces and its terrifying depths. Tomasz Jedrowski is a remarkable writer.”  — Justin Torres, bestselling author of We the Animals

    Set in early 1980s Poland against the violent decline of communism, a tender and passionate story of first love between two young men who eventually find themselves on opposite sides of the political divide—a stunningly poetic and heartrending literary debut for fans of Andre Aciman, Garth Greenwell, and Alan Hollinghurst.

    When university student Ludwik meets Janusz at a summer agricultural camp, he is fascinated yet wary of this handsome, carefree stranger. But a chance meeting by the river soon becomes an intense, exhilarating, and all-consuming affair. After their camp duties are fulfilled, the pair spend a dreamlike few weeks camping in the countryside, bonding over an illicit copy of James Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room. Inhabiting a beautiful natural world removed from society and its constraints, Ludwik and Janusz fall deeply in love. But in their repressive communist and Catholic society, the passion they share is utterly unthinkable.

    Once they return to Warsaw, the charismatic Janusz quickly rises in the political ranks of the party and is rewarded with a highly-coveted position in the ministry. Ludwik is drawn toward impulsive acts of protest, unable to ignore rising food prices and the stark economic disparity around them. Their secret love and personal and political differences slowly begin to tear them apart as both men struggle to survive in a regime on the brink of collapse.

    Shifting from the intoxication of first love to the quiet melancholy of growing up and growing apart, Swimming in the Dark is a potent blend of romance, post-war politics, intrigue, and history. Lyrical and sensual, immersive and intense, Tomasz Jedrowski has crafted an indelible and thought-provoking literary debut that explores freedom and love in all its incarnations.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperAudio
    Release dateApr 28, 2020
    ISBN9780062987761
    Author

    Tomasz Jedrowski

    Tomasz Jedrowski is a graduate of Cambridge University and the Université de Paris. Born in Germany to Polish parents, he has lived in several countries, including Poland, and currently resides outside Paris. This is his first novel.

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    Reviews for Swimming in the Dark

    4.5/5

    411 ratings35 reviews

    What did you think?

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    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 5/5
      Well written and vivid in details. I felt as I was there.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 4/5
      A touching, bittersweet story. Very good narrator. I enjoyed it.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      Beautiful story and writing, and the narration was excellent.. Highly recommend it

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      What a beautiful, sad and emotional book at the same time delicate. Impossible not to get caught up in the narrative and the character's journey of self-discovery.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      it’s so good, one of my favorites books now. ?

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      The right book for Pride month! 100% would read it again and again!

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      Very good books on Poland LGBTQ history and the need for more stories like this

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      Fantastic book and narration is also exquisite. Wish there was a a part two. So long since a book moved me to tears.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      Loved it. A very emotional coming of age story. Recommended.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      Second person narrative is so difficult to use because it is extremely intimate and only certain stories work well with it. This book was one of them.

      From the very beginning, I knew this book was going to break my heart. Ludwik was such a strong character, from trying to find his place in society and the new form of government, struggling with his romance with Janusz, and, in the present day, letting go of the past. Janusz was also complex. He was trying to work into and up the political ranking system while working on getting the best of both worlds. We have a romantic and a realist/pragmatist in a controlling, homophobic government, both having opposing political views, they were doomed from the start.

      In a way, I wish we got more of Ludwik's present life in the states.

      Will M. Watt has such a soothing voice and did an amazing job narrating.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      A bittersweet and lovely tribute to the pain of war, isolation, bigotry, and history of homosexuality in Poland.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      A beautifully, thoughtfully written story that is both exciting, placid, inspiring and heart breaking…
    • 5/5
      Absolutely beautiful. Painfully poetic. Wonderfully written, and most definitely worth a read-read.
    • 5/5
      This book is a miracle unto itself. I am grateful to have experienced it. Also, Will M Watt's narration is incredible. Highly recommended.
    • 5/5
      truly a remarkable story , beautifully written and excellent narration , I loved the main character "Ludwik" and his sense of profoundness in every situation (but no to a cringy extent) , from meticulous attention to details of ambient to very well expressed thought process and motives behind every emotion and moves made him highly likable and retable in my opinion .
      the story itself follows the journey of ludwik over the years in his conflicted country and his situation in a very poetic, sublime yet very emotional manner, absolutely worth the read/listen.
    • 4/5
      It was such an amazing book, sometimes it can be hard to read some lines and realize that some things didn't changed through the years
    • 3/5
      The tattoo end of Communist Poland, coming of age, and first romance between to men... This is a tender her brutal honest story. It had just a little 80's flair but seen they the eyes of Polish youth and they experiences at the end People's Republic of Poland... The writing is great, the story is fleeting but fulfilling at the end.... Great characters and setting
    • 5/5
      It’s been a long time, since I’ve had the feeling of as soon as I finish a book, I immediately want to read it again to absorb anything I missed the first time. Some of the most beautiful prose I’ve experienced.
    • 5/5
      Beautiful! Heartbreaking! The writing was superb! Great performance! Highly recommend!
    • 5/5
      I was reluctant to give it five stars, because it made me suffer so much. But I think it deserves them.
    • 5/5
      Absolutely beautiful and gut wrenching. I read this book for the first time three months ago - it has refused to fade away.
    • 5/5
      Narraçao bafonica e livro ótimo também. E essa capa eh tudo
    • 5/5
      This book is a coming of age story, a bildungsroman, a coming out story, centered around a young man named Ludwik growing up in the 1980s communist Poland. Following him from his youth when a Jewish boy, on whom he has a crush, disappears. In his twenties at a summer work camp, he meets Janus and he falls for him. They are divided by communism and liberalism, in a country and a time where homosexuality was a serious crime.

      I liked a lot about this book. There is a sensuality, an openness that really attracted me to this book. It reads as almost a confessional, bouncing in time to draw significant threads of meaning in a bigger tapestry. “Giovanni’s Room” by James Baldwin is woven into this plot and plays an important role in the protagonist’s life. I listened to this on audiobook and the performance by Will M. Wall was sensational. His accents, his breath, his nuance in voices was flawless. This performance was definitely one of the best I’ve ever heard. At time it had ASMR qualities, giving me shivers down my back, a quickening of my pulse. The book has sexy and tender moments capturing first loves, youth, rebellion, and freedom.

      I struggled with the writing in this book which at times felt overwritten. I noticed every smilie, many painfully obvious and blunt, repeating one after another. The author repeated descriptions in triplicate often which turned from poetic to imposing. I don’t think the author’s first language is in English, and it’s definitely not bad writing, just noticeable, especially in a debut.
      •
      Overall, this is a beautiful story set in 1980s communist Poland which I haven’t encountered in gay fiction before. At times the plotting was too sparse and didn’t hold my attention though the audio performance and the subject matter entranced me. ★★★★★ ◊ Audiobook ◊ Fiction, LGBT, Coming of Age ◊ Listened on Scribd. ◊ Published by William Morrow on April 28, 2020. ◾︎
    • 2/5
      Do not listen to this book on audio - the Polish names and words are very commonly mispronounced and it hurts the story. The narrator is great, just not for this story. Overall story is - 4.5 I loved it and great research behind it, just better to read physically
    • 5/5
      Incredibly written and narrated. The author has an amazing gift for illustrating ideas, using brilliant descriptions to explain the human experience and dives into some of the inner workings of the human condition.
    • 4/5
      The last 2 chapters saved this book, it’s a good read. But why the accent? The boy is Polish, not Scottish, it’s perplexing.
    • 5/5
      Beautiful and concise prose, and wonderfully narrated. A short masterpiece.
    • 5/5
      I absolutely loved this book both as a gay man and someone who has Polish (from my Dad's mother's side, mostly from Podlaskie Voivodeship). I loved how Tomasz Jedrowski made you feel Ludwik's emotions from erotic lust, jealousy, and political anger.

      However, having Polish, this novel made me re-realize how much the Polish fought to keep there culture alive from occupations, genocide, and authoritarian dictatorships. I also hope, gays in Poland, now, know of this novel and see there is hope for them because it makes me angry where Poland, politically, is going.

      I recommend this book to anyone who wants to read a good gay male romance along with cold war and Polish history. Keep in mind this is a non-linear novel so the plot keeps going back to flashbacks. As well as, keeping in mind, the narrator, Ludwik, is talking to Janusz.
    • 4/5
      A coming out novel set in the Poland just prior to the breakup of the Soviet Union. Matter of fact, this is a story of a love broken up by a conservative set of societal norms. Remorseless in its vivid portrayal of a time and a place, it could have buried itself in cheap sentiment. But like the novel that plays such a pivotal role in the book (Baldwin’s _Giovanni’s Room_), Jederowski’s novel focuses on the social alienation of the narrator and his central dilemma: Can he be happy lying about his sexuality and his love? Spoiler Quote:“…you were right when you said that people can’t always give us what we want from them; that you can’t ask them to love you the way you want.”
    • 4/5
      Ludwik, the narrator of Swimming in the Dark, is writing to a past lover, Janusz, about their time together after meeting in a summer camp. Set in 1980's Poland, the relationship develops amidst the decline of communism, and the two lovers find themselves on opposite sides of the political divide. Even after leaving Poland, Ludwik can't seem to get Janusz off his mind.

      “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. I am done with pretending that I’ve erased you from my mind. Some things cannot be erased through silence. Some people have that power over you, whether you like it or not. I begin to see that now. Some people, some events, make you lose your head. They're like guillotines, cutting your life in two, the dead and the alive, the before and after.”

      This novel is poetically written. There are so many memorable quotes. Everything was given the amount of words needed to paint the picture as to what was going on and as to what the narrator was feeling at that moment. It was so well written that I would forget it was being written to Janusz. I felt myself becoming one with the story and really feeling for both of the main characters and their situations.

      The historical background was also interesting. I've been trying to branch out from only reading historical fiction written in the WWII era. To have a queer book written in what is the aftermath of that era really grabbed me. Thomasz Jedrowski was able to write little pieces of history here and there, even though Ludwik was writing to Janusz and both boys had lived through it. They obviously knew what was going on, but the way it was still included so the reader wasn't completely left in the dark was informative.

      Though set in a bit of rough history, it was a refreshingly lighter read written in beautiful prose about love, loss, and growing up and apart that I read in less than twenty-four hours.