I came across Swimming in the Dark, the debut novel by gay author Tomasz Jedrowski. It was published early this year. It's a very absorbing story of two young Polish men.
It opens with the 20-something Ludwik in New York in December 1981 a year after he fled alone from Poland for the "dreadful safety of America". The night after hearing the news of the declaration of martial law by the Communist government, he cannot sleep because he cannot stop thinking of Janusz back in Warsaw.
"I don't know whether I ever want you to read this, but I know that I need to write it. Because you have been on my mind for too long..."
The story is addressed to Janusz, beginning with an account of Ludwik's childhood growing up with his mother and grandmother in Wroclaw and disturbing experiences that make him take refuge in books. When he is a little older, the two women include him in their secret listening to broadcasts of Radio Free Europe.
As a university student in Warsaw, he overhears a conversation about James Baldwin's Giovanni's Room which was banned in Poland. He manages to get a copy which he hides inside the cover of an approved book and takes it with him when after passing their final exams and in order to be allowed to graduate, the final year students have to do gruelling manual labour during the summer harvesting beets in the country. It is there that he becomes intrigued by Janusz and reluctantly lends him his clandestine copy of Giovanni's Room.
At the end of their service in the work camp and brought together by the Baldwin novel, they spend an idyllic time camping together in the countryside.
But as autumn approaches, they have to return to Warsaw where conditions are grim. The repressive regime is foundering with a collapsing economy, shortages of food and fuel for heating and corruption as a protest movement grows in the streets.
Although homosexuality is not illegal, the regime and society are very homophobic, so Ludwik and Janusz, despite their passion, cannot develop their relationship openly or live together. Sadly, they discover they have diametrically opposed responses to the political situation and very different ideas about their future. The story becomes more and more dramatic and suspenseful as the months pass.
"You were right when you said that people can't always give us what we want from them."
Tomasz Jedrowski's writing is very powerful, so much so that I worried how much of it was based on his own life.
He was born to Polish parents in West Germany, but his family used to visit Poland. He met a family friend there, a man who he thinks was in love with his father and was interested in what his life must have been like. Having studied law in Cambridge, England and Paris, Tomasz Jedrowski worked for a London law firm until he left in 2012 to write his novel. He took time to explore life in Poland, resulting in vivid word pictures of Warsaw and the countryside. He was also inspired by reading Giovanni's Room in New York.
The book is dedicated "To Laurent, my home."
Swimming in the Dark has an extra resonance now as the populist right-wing government has used a homophobic scare campaign with the collaboration of the Catholic Church to win elections and works to roll back what little legal protection there was for LGBTIQ people.