Swimming in the Dark

The novel begins in a summer agricultural camp, where Ludwik meets Janusz, and the relationship develops in countryside away from any audience, which is why the natural world is described as beautiful and removed from the constraints around them.

The second half moves to Warsaw and changes the terms of the partnership. Janusz rises quickly in the party and receives a government position, while Ludwik is drawn towards protests and cannot ignore rising food prices and the gap between the official account of the country and what he sees. The novel's interest is in how the two men respond differently to the same state, and it is written as a recollection of the months they had together. The two of them bond over an illegal copy of James Baldwin's Giovanni's Room, which lends the affair a borrowed text and a set of expectations neither of them can meet. The novel is written as a recollection, so the months together are already past when the reader arrives, and it is the political difference between the two men that separates them in the end, since the state that promotes one of them is closing in on the other.