While literature is often studied in language departments or read as part of national canons, Witold Gombrowicz's life and work seem in many ways particularly apt for breaking down such boundaries, not only because of his migratory biography but also because of his own generally playfully deconstructive bent, perhaps particularly as regards nationalism—one of the reasons why the inclusion of him in the Polish canon remains a paradoxical project (as Allen J. Kuharski points out, p. 249). In light of this background, in Routledge's Studies in Twentieth-Century Literature series comes this tightly-packed anthology on the author, mobilizing the “transnational context” of Gombrowicz's work, with the goal “to break down the boundaries between Polish and Latin American studies as well as those between North American, Latin American, and European scholarship” (p. 2). It brings together seventeen of the most high-profile scholars and critics working on the author, both senior and more junior, and their geographical spread also follows the book's goals (although only one is based in Latin America). The book is then structured into sections around translation, affect, and politics.The framework renders Gombrowicz a migratory, diasporic author, who has “superseded the nation as the basic framework of analysis” (p. 2). And the sections suit this—translation by its nature, affect by its transpersonality and (sub)liminality, and politics as the author's paradoxical shadow, the inevitable politicization of the migrant and his centrifugal missives, but also as the strategies of an author avowedly attempting to remain beyond its fray. As per Dapía's instructive introduction, this scope is broad enough to include “translat[ing] not only his works but also his subjectivity to others (and translate others to himself)” (p. 4), which allows it to resonate with Gombrowicz's stated position—of being his own “separate state.”1The first part, “Lost in Translation,” collects six chapters ranging from scrupulous additions to the biography and details of the inside of translation processes, editorial disputes, and self-promotions the author was involved in, to comparisons of translations, more philosophical approaches to translatological questions, and contextualization of lexical borrowing. Daniel Balderston's chapter documents and analyzes corrections to the first, Rex Café translation of Ferdydurke, mulling primarily on questions of localization; Zofia Stasiakiewicz chronicles the vicissitudes of Gombrowicz's journey into (peninsular) Spanish; and Anna Bożena Zaboklicka Zakwaska compares the obscure first translation of The Marriage (which Gombrowicz was involved with) to the Polish text, published for the first time five years later, revealing big differences that open for interesting reflections on how, what, and why the author decided to change the play for the Argentinean readership. Magdalena Heydel's chapter looks at the history of and compares the two English translations of Ferdydurke, paying particular notice to the many ways Daniela Borchardt's later one—the first directly from Polish—solves the many complex semantic entanglements Gombrowicz's wordplay entails, which the former fails to attempt to render, which may, as she argues, partly have done the disservice of introducing him as a more somber author.In his chapter, Carlos Gamerro reverses the trajectory and looks at the stray word puto that made its way into Gombrowicz's Trans-Atlantyk. He gives an anecdotal-pragmatic delimitation of its semantic breadth and meaning for Argentinean culture, looks at its usage in three other works of literature, and contextualizes its embroilment in the country's politics, especially its ebbs and tides of homophobia. Olaf Kühl considers what he calls the “secret” nature of Gombrowicz's work—the particular way ambiguity and polysemy are connected with erotics in the author's universe—and looks at the challenges it poses for the translator, comparing different translations into English.As this last chapter opens up for questions of an ontological nature, it segues well into the next section, “Cartography of Affect in Gombrowicz's Work,” which opens with a refined chapter by Michał Paweł Markowski that compares boredom in Gombrowicz, Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz (Witkacy), and Bruno Schulz, arguing on the one hand that it is a central affect of modernity and, on the other, that it is a property of ontology; Piotr Seweryn Rosół investigates Gombrowicz's strategies to overcome ontological entrapment by employing liminality—subjectivity by others and categories that deconstruct modern dichotomies, a “sadomasochistic” dance that “stag[es] [. . .] resistance and subversion or treacherous obedience, [. . .] confirm[ing] the irrevocable presence of the Law” (p. 123) and “defends singularity” (p. 124). In a like spirit, Daniel Pratt centers form's other, youth, “the un-Formed potential between childhood and adulthood” (p. 152). Dapía gives a background on affect theory and performs a vivisection of the short story “A Premeditated Crime,” making a convincing case for his interpretation of the short story's central dynamic as miscommunicated affects. Tul'si (Tuesday) Bhambry reads the author with Maurice Blanchot and looks at peripatetic moments of silence in Trans-Atlantyk, a creative reading that opens up new pathways. In another ingenious chapter, Błażej Warkocki extends his monograph with a reading of “The Events of the Banbury” not so much as a collective homosexual panic but as the internal homophobic panic of “an increasingly frightened queer” (p. 136) aboard “a ship of ‘normalsów’ (‘normies’)” (p. 136).2To bring out political aspects of the author, the final section employs a few different strategies: Jerzy Jarzębski meditates on the gradual disappearance of the ludic “Ferdydurkean individual” and his replacement with the motif of “wild youth” and totalitarianism, a topic also explored by Andrzej Stanisław Kowalczyk, who focuses on Nazism in the Berlin Diary. They also look at less canonical texts, such as Gombrowicz's 1938 and 1939 articles on Italy and Austria, and the gradual way his reflections cast a shadow over his “interhuman church utopia” (p. 222). Jean-Pierre Salgas suggestively paints the development of the spiritual bond between Gombrowicz and Schulz, incorporating questions of politics and choices surrounding Polish-Jewishness; and Kuharski chronicles the performances of and the constraints on the author's plays in the Polish People's Republic, which were performed even while publications were banned. Finally, the author's biographer Klementyna Suchanów peppers her chapter with anecdotes as she relates Gombrowicz's struggles to become translated and reach international acclaim.While the framing itself structures the book well, one could ask some questions about some of the specifics of its choices: a focus on the Spanish and French translations is, for instance, biographically motivated, yet the focus on the English translations appears pragmatic, which begs the question why not broaden the material to include other early translations, such as Ferdydurke into German, or, for that matter, other, later ones? It is also interesting to note which works there is more focus on—and, among the major ones, the relative absence of Cosmos may point to the limits of the framework, as the author's last novel arguably is when he can fully shed his dialectical reliance on Polishness (and making the tension between national and transnational a less relevant dynamic). While generally well edited, a minor outstanding solecism is that referenced Polish titles in translated articles have retained their inflections and not been put in the nominative case. All in all, this is an impressive anthology, with trailblazing chapters, yet with enough different entry points that it would interest almost any Gombrowicz reader.