Ferdydurke
Józio Kowalski is thirty and has published a book when his old schoolmaster calls, pronounces him a boy, and marches him back to a gymnasium where the pupils fight duels of grimaces over whether innocence is real. Escaping with a classmate in search of someone unspoiled by manners, he is billeted on a progressive city family whose schoolgirl daughter is armed with modernity, and then washes up at a country manor where the gentry and their servants are locked in a ritual neither side can drop. Gombrowicz's first novel, and the one that set out his lifelong quarrel with the forms people impose on each other.
Open Ferdydurke in the archive — filters, lineage graph and full facet browsing.
Attributes
Plot structure
Symbol / motif
Conflict
Culture / tradition
Closest analogues
- 66% · 15 shared
- 61% · 14 shared
- 59% · 13 shared
- 59% · 13 shared
- 59% · 12 shared
- 58% · 15 shared