Description
Book SynopsisAvailable for the first time in English, Zofia Nalkowska''s Boundary was originally published as Granica in Poland in 1935. The modernist novel was widely discussed upon its publication and praised for its psychological realism and stylistic and compositional artistry. Over the years, it has been translated into several languages and made into a feature film, and remains a standard text in the Polish secondary school curriculum.
Nalkowska was a pioneer of feminist fiction in Central Europe. Her observation of inequality in the treatment of men and women is at the heart of Boundary, which explores a transgressive love affair and its repercussions. She perceived that menespecially of the upper and middle classesfelt free to have sexual relations with lower class women, whereas it was not socially acceptable for women of any class to have sexual relations outside of marriage, or even admit to enjoying sex. This meant that working class women were seduced and then abandoned when
Trade Review
Zofia Nalkowska has written a first-class novel.... It is amazing that we have had to wait over eighty years to read it in English, and we should be grateful that we can now do so.
* The Modern Novel *
Boundary impresses with its formal and stylistic artistry, which comes through in Ursula Phillips's translation, the first into English.
* Times Literary Supplement *
