Service95 Book Club With Dua Lipa From The Archives: Tomasz Jedrowski on his queer coming-of-age love story set in communist Poland
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Apr 28, 2026 Tomasz Jedrowski, a Polish-German novelist best known for Swimming in the Dark, talks about queer first love set in 1980s communist Poland. He explores writing as a form of coming out, the choice of second‑person narration, and how history, memory and city life shape identity. He also discusses reclaiming lost cultural histories and teases his next novel about humanity’s origins.
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Two Creative Comings Out
- Tomasz Jedrowski describes two major "comings out": an internal creative awakening and the public act of quitting his job to write.
- He credits therapy for unlocking the internal desire to write, then made a radical break from a corporate law career to pursue fiction full time.
Roots Shaped The Novel's Setting
- Jedrowski says setting Swimming in the Dark in Poland came from an inevitable pull to his roots and the unresolved family and national traumas.
- He reused real places and relatives (his grandmother's flat, a great-aunt) to ground the novel's intimacy and specificity.
Second Person Creates Intimacy
- He adopted second-person narration after reading Jonathan Kemp's London Triptych and found the voice created intense intimacy.
- The technique made the book feel like a private letter and let readers eavesdrop on Ludwig's relationship.
