Swimming in the Dark

The emotionally charged Prologue to Tomasz Jedrowski's debut novel Swimming in the Dark perfectly sets the stage for the rest of this interesting work of fiction in which the author weaves a tale of his young protagonist against the dramatic events of recent Polish history. The narrative is not organized chronologically but zigzags through close to a dozen years starting with the unrest of 1968 and ending with the 1981 martial law. It is on December 13, 1981, that the novel begins. The as yet nameless narrator is woken up in his Brooklyn apartment by a radio announcement “We are interrupting the program for a special announcement,” said the lady in her soft round voice. “This morning, on December the thirteenth, martial law has been declared in the Socialist Republic of Poland. It follows weeks of strikes and unrest by pro-democracy protesters . . . ” (Prologue). The news from...