The Poles seemed to lose interest in novels very quickly. Hardly had they managed to produce a handful of decent ones than Witold Gombrowicz set to work writing “anti-novels.” His contemporary, Witkacy, refused even to accord novels the status of “art.” Polish writers are still experimenting with a form barely mastered. Take Sławomir Shuty’s Zwał:

Today Barbara, let’s just call her Basia, sticking her big bull head out from behind the monitor, loudly told us the price she had paid for success. A series of analogue sacrifices. Old tiles. A broken flusher in a Koło brand toilet gleaming with cleanliness, the unforgettable stop light during the delightful excursion to Zakopane. Gruelling hunger strikes ending in culinary orgies. Unsatisfied urge to carry files. Unsuccessful jogging in knock-offs of baggy designer tracksuits. Casual sex with a false arm and an equally casual sketch. A lot of pressure to succeed.

Casual sex with a false arm? Analogue sacrifices? An urge to carry files? Truths universally acknowledged they ain’t. Shuty’s novel-length book is really a series of linguistic experiments. The subject matter (when discernible) is quite banal to western readers but appears to be something of a novelty in newly capitalist Poland: kissing customer ass in order to hit monthly targets and earn a bonus is not such fun after all (Shuty has first hand experience of this – but who doesn’t?).

Parts of it are good, parts are indecipherable, and in other parts he just tries too hard to catch and label a zeitgeist not so elusive that it requires a great novelist to capture. His “kebab generation” may go down well east of the Vistula but to us sophisticates it sounds like a disaffected David McWilliams (frantic phrase coiner: cf. the Spar generation, the Magic Bus generation, the Ryanair generation, the provo riche, Robopaddies, Hicos, the Pope’s children etc. etc. etc.).

Typing “polish poetry” into a certain, well-known search engine gives around 22,600 results. “Polish novels” gives 212.