In 1958, Michel Foucault arrived in Poland to work on his thesis—a work that eventually came to be published as
The History of Madness. While he was there, he became involved with a number of members of the gay community, including a certain ‘Jurek, ‘ who eventually led the secret police directly to Foucault’s hotel room, causing his subsequent exit from Poland. That boy’s motivations and true identity were hidden among secret police documents for decades, until Remigiusz Ryziński stumbled upon the right report and uncovered the truth about the whole situation.
Nominated for the Nike Literary Award,
Foucault in Warsaw reconstructs a vibrant, engaging picture of gay life in Poland under communism—from the joys found in secret nightclubs, to the fears of not knowing who was a secret informant.
A propos de l’auteur
Sean Gasper Bye is a translator of Polish fiction, reportage, and drama. He has published translations of Watercolours by Lidia Ostałowska, History of a Disappearance by Filip Springer, The King of Warsaw by Szczepan Twardoch, and Ellis Island: A People’s History by Małgorzata Szejnert. He’s also published shorter pieces in The Guardian, Words Without Borders, Catapult, World Literature Today, and elsewhere. He is a winner of the 2016 Asymptote Close Approximations Prize, a 2019 National Endowment for the Arts translation fellow, and former Literature and Humanities Curator at the Polish Cultural Institute New York.