Having an incompetent and ignorant person attain high office, surrounded by a group of equally ignorant and incompetent toadies and sycophants is something that we are all too familiar with, so this 1930s Polish novel will strike more than a few chords. Popular in its day and still widely read and enjoyed –it has been filmed twice, most recently in 2002, and has also been made into a TV series – its relevance is undisputed. It tells the tale of Nicodemus Dyzma, a poor, hungry, unemployed clerk who by chance manages to gate crash a wealthy party – which he does in the hope of getting something to eat before he’s discovered and ejected. But he doesn’t get discovered and ejected and a random confrontation with one of the guests finds him applauded and admired for his boldness and acuity. Within a short space of time he is taken on-board by the great and the good and rises to high office. He’s considered an invaluable asset to the country and he takes full advantage of his undeserved reputation. The book offers a bitingly satiric critique of Poland's political corruption and venality and the reader can’t quite help admiring Dyzma for his chutzpah. His trickery and deception depends entirely on others’ assessment of him and their willingness to be deceived. Sounds familiar? It’s an amusing and entertaining novel, well worth a read, although there are some flaws. At one stage he becomes involved with some high-society women involved with the occult, which is definitely a step too far, and there’s a very unpleasant interlude with a young prostitute and her assault by the police, which sits in an otherwise comic novel very uncomfortably. But that apart this is a clever and all too plausible exploration of politics and business, and has a universal significance. Wikipedia tells us that Dyzma has become proverbial in Poland as an archetype of the crude opportunist who makes his upwardly mobile way by dint of fortuitous connections with the acquiescence of an oblivious society. Quite. In fact Dyzma comes out of the whole story reasonably well compared to those who surround him. An interesting read indeed.

First published in 1932, The Career of Nicodemus Dyzma, by Tadeusz Dołęga-Mostowicz, is well known in Poland, commonly believed to have been the "inspiration" that Jerzy Kosinski blatantly ripped off for Being There. By contrast, although he is morally and culturally bereft, Nicodemus Dyzma has a firmer hand in architecting his fate.

Dyzma is a fool mistaken for a wiseman who speaks his mind. While naively and brutishly looking out for his own best interests, he quite accidentally climbs to a position of great economic and political influence in Warsaw.

It all starts with an invitation to a Minister's banquet that he picks up off the ground — Dyzma decides to score a free meal, and he makes some friends along the way.

It's mysterious how he holds such sway. This novel goes beyond a superficial critique of the division of classes; it's not simply the nouveau riche standing up to the old guard (with both of them having rights over women and peasants) — a very real thing in early 20th-century Poland.

It's difficult to regard Dyzma as an Everyman — he's not just uneducated, he's thick. At best, Dyzma reflects those who meet him, echoes what they say.

The story is mostly light and funny — it's astonishing what he gets away with. But there are some dark moments, including a murder (Dyzma hires some thugs to take someone out) and some violent rapes (which scenes were skin-crawlingly unpleasant). It's difficult to dismiss the violence against women as a product of its times.

Then there's the satanic sex cult of women who revere Dyzma as a god, complete with elaborate ritual preparations and peyote. Truly unexpected. Perhaps Dyzma owes more to their spells and their influence then he can fathom.

The novel has relevance today, calling into question whom we allow to rise to positions of power, what we allow to pass for wisdom, how we measure the success of an individual relative to that of the state.

Only George Ponimirski, who is Dyzma's brother-in-law by the novel's end, sees him for what he is. But he's been institutionalized before; he's generally regarded as a madman.

Like any good satire, this book, written about Polish political and social corruption in 1932, has something to say about our present time and country (USA, for me). Apparently this story was a significant inspiration (if not more) for Kozinski's "Being There" and has long been a staple of Polish mass media, but only now has it been translated into English. The plot concerns a lower class street hustler who, through a series of accidents, becomes the toast of Warsaw society and an acclaimed political actor, despite having little talent and no social grace. He is largely a blank screen who keeps his mouth shut and lets people project their fantasies and hopes onto him.

Most of the book is bitterly funny, although there are a few hard-to-read scenes; our hero is not a very nice man, And he has a lot to hide. While I can't comment on the aptness of the translation, the English is very readable, using a lot of idiom and colloquial language that I assume mirrors the style of the original Polish.

I received this from Netgalley.com.

"Nicodemus Dyzma an unemployed clerk crashes a swanky party, where he makes an offhand crass remark that sets him on a new course. Soon high society—from government ministers to drug-fueled aristocrats—wants a piece of him."

This story greatly reflects Poland's political climate. I rather liked Nicodemus' sarcastic attitude but the writing felt a little choppy. Translated books can be hard to rate.

3☆

I was given an ARC of this book by Northwestern University Press, via Netgalley, and therefore cannot quote it as of yet. There are, however, so many moments I loved in this book. It’s laugh-out-loud humor juxtaposed with the vulgarity of Nicodemus Dyzma’s innermost thoughts paints a wonderfully human portrait. The ending to the novel, although abrupt, is perfection. This is certainly a timely novel as it is a brutal commentary on class politics and the power of “impressions.” Nicodemus could do no wrong in the eyes of the aristocracy and the government; but secretly he was an ignorant, albeit shrewd, and beastly man. I actually really liked his character, despite his shocking flaws. One of the main reasons I felt the need to downgrade this text, however, was the inclusion of a scene of implied sexual assault and occasional use/abuse of “working girls.” The language is also occasionally explicit, and there are two very strange but minor peyote-driven occult-ish scenes. I do feel, however, that given the cultural and societal frameworks in which this was written (1930s Europe), all of these are appropriate to that time and how people behaved.

Nicodemus Dyzma is a caricature of the worst of us, a pig in sheep’s clothing perhaps, but he’s also a cautionary tale of how power corrupts completely. This is “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern” meets Mad Men, except with far fewer deaths...Despite its flaws, I think this book could find its way to being an international classic if given the chance. I recommend this book with a caution about the sexual assault and occasional language.

You know, I've lost count of the times I've read a guide book about Eastern Europe, or the old Soviet Bloc, where it says if you just stumble on a wedding celebration you'll be pointedly invited in, forced to drink yourself silly, and everyone will call you their best friend and yet not be able to converse one word with you. This is bollux, and the nearest that has ever happened was some drunken biznismen slinging a couple of vodkas and smiles my way in one of the Stans once. However, for our hero, if that's the right word, it sort of becomes true. He finds a waylaid invite to a ministerial party, and wears to it what the pawnbroker was just about to receive. There he manages to delight many big wigs, and one in particular takes it upon him to pay Nicodemus a fortune every month to be his go-between and society fixer. Society? He's been living with a couple with a newborn, alongside a hooker, and hardly managing to pay the rent. Fixer? He's been something in a rural post office, the latest in a long line of failed career attempts. How could he have stumbled so perfectly well into a position so perfectly ill-suited for him?

This does not read like a state-of-the-nation, society comedy from a different world from the 1930s. Yes, it has some of the arch commentary about the upper class that you might have got from Chekhovian Russia, but it all feels so much more modern than that. The fish out of water shtick is very enjoyable here, although the book does not allow Dyzma to be that naive for too long – the modern word for someone on the blag, getting to where he's going by being in the right place at the right time and just succeeding by knowing what to say to whom, is Dyzma, courtesy of this novel that is so noted in its native Poland.

It's not a perfect read – it's certainly a touch on the long side, but it does have a healthy amount of call-backs, and even if some of the secondary characters aren't defined well enough, they all engage with a right old fun web of intrigue surrounding Dyzma by the end. Also, the snappy and informative introduction here is spot on when it mentions modern parallels to this – you can see the current equivalent, of the person dropping the right allegation on social media, just to get what he wants. This is an exploration of fake news, corruption, and the hoi polloi's bland acceptance of the inept, decades before we were collectively forced to live through it. I wasn't a hundred per cent convinced by the translation – there is a character who speaks in turns of phrase, if you know what I'm saying at the end of the day, but beyond him the few colloquialisms and cusses that turn up seem somewhat forced, however truthful to the original they might be. Also, a lot of the vocab is rather high-falutin', and not what Dyzma himself would ever have understood. But beyond wishing this to have been trimmed here and there, I was on board for this – it's prescient, engaging and not too bad at all. A pronunciation guide might have served, as that could have made this more friendly to the general reader as opposed to the specialist literary expert, but this is a book the commuting consumer should be able to get entertainment from.

What is the best-known Polish novel you’ve never heard of? I’ll hazard a guess and say it’s The Career of Nicodemus Dyzma by Tadeusz Dolęga-Mostowicz. First issued in 1932 as Kariera Nikodema Dyzmy, it is now being published by Northwestern University Press in a translation by Ewa Malachowska-Pasek and Megan Thomas, the first one ever in English. As Benjamin Paloff explains in his introduction to the work, this novel had such an impact in Poland that it has penetrated popular culture and parlance where the word “Dyzma” is used for “a phony, a fraud, especially one whose trickery depends on others’ assumptions, self-deceptions, and moral shortcomings”. Jerzy Kosinski’s Being There (1970), later adapted into a film featuring Peter Sellers, was immediately recognised by Polish critics to be a plagiarised version of Dolęga-Mostowicz’s novel. Ironically, the original Dyzma is making his debut in the English-speaking world fifty years after his copy did. It is a twist of fate which seems strangely apt considering that this is a novel about an impostor and trickster.

The Career of Nicodemus Dyzma is set in the (then contemporary) Poland of the 1930s. With the declaration of the Second Polish Republic in 1918, Poland had become an independent state, after having been previously ruled by the German, Austro-Hungarian and Russian Empires. This novel is a biting satire on the ruling class which took over the country, portrayed as a society corrupt at its heart, built on an unhealthy and unholy alliance between the political class, Polish nobility and big business. We meet the protagonist, Dyzma, as a down-and-out, unemployed clerk, eking out a hand-to-mouth existence. Having acquired, by pure chance, an invitation to a high-class party, he decides to gate-crash the event, with no other expectation than to eat his fill for free. However, an altercation with bigwig Terkowski, hated and feared by all, marks him out as a brave straight-talker, exactly the “strong man” needed in politics. No one is more surprised at this than Dyzma himself. As his fame grows and he becomes the darling of the upper classes, Dyzma cunningly manages to survive by lying through his teeth, recycling other people’s opinions, surrounding himself with trusted collaborators and, when necessary, relying on the power of his newly-found riches and connections. In the circles he frequents, Dyzma’s ignorant silences are seen as proof of his wisdom; his uncouth behaviour is excused as a mark of his strong, magnetic personality; his demeaning attitude towards women is admired (including by some of his conquests) as the embodiment of the virile.

What I found brilliant about this novel is that Dyzma beguiles even us readers, even though we know he is a fraud. He is presented, not unfavourably, as an anti-hero. His often comic escapades, sometimes redolent of early Waugh (there’s a brilliant set-piece involving Dyzma’s appointment as the leader of a cabal of high-society witches), make him a surprisingly endearing character, one we root for as he hoodwinks a corrupt and morally bankrupt political class. It is when Dyzma’s actions become unequivocally indefensible that we realise that, like many others in the novel, we have also been taken in by the protagonist (and his creator). This is not light-hearted comedy but a dark and cynical satire. And real satire always has a moral heart. In this case, the message is as relevant as ever. By all means, take the ruling class to task. But be equally careful of charismatic figures who portray themselves or are portrayed as political saviours. Be careful of those jesters who promise to short-circuit the system, and yet end up using it for their own ends. Close to a century after its publication, as the culture of the “strong man” seems to be gaining ground again, the novel comes across as a frighteningly timely one.

Wow - even though this book was first published in Poland in 1932, it mirrors our own political situation now in many ways! Th political satire is is an indictment of a system where money and connections matter most, and crudeness and ignorance are worshipped! Could have been written today! Thanks to Netgalley for this ARC.

Thank you to the publisher for an advanced copy via netgalley!

First, the prologue of this book adds a lot of great historical background of this book and the controversy associated with it. I was excited to read this book before the prologue, but afterwards I was even more intrigued!

Second, this book is well written and keeps you on the edge of your seat as you read how a broke, uneducated man used his street smarts to climb the social hierarchy to the point of declining the position of prime minister!!

This story reminds us of the dangers of entrusting the people in power blindly.

The description for this reminded me of the brilliant book (Kosiński) and movie Being There (staring Peter Sellers) before those were mentioned in the blurb. This is certainly different but good in it's own way. It is well written and somewhat timeless. For those seeking a lighthearted read that will likely generate a few smiles, this may be it.

I really appreciate the review copy!!

“The Career of Nicodemus Dyzma” by Tadeusz Dolega-Mosyowicz and masterfully translated by Ewa Malachowska-Pasek and Megan Thomas is a classic Polish novel first now available to English readers thanks to Northwestern University Press. It is viewed as a thinly veiled metaphor of Polish political life between the wars. It is also viewed by some as a prescient depiction of the future Solidarity era headed by Lech Walesa.

This is all assuredly true. “The Career” is often absurdly comical, unbelievable, disquieting, unnerving. Set pieces are wonderfully written. There are tons of characters, some drawn more fully than others, but the entire Polish 1930’s class system is described in all its absurdity and corruption. There is lots to learn by those with lots to learn of mid-20th Century Polish manners and fears.

With that said, I found the novel to be far more universal. I was reminded of people that I have met along the way in politics, business, or civic affairs when the first question you ask is, “How did he get there?” (because it is always a “he”). The answer once you dig down just a little is that some circumstance of fate over-interpreted or overvalued an implied credential or a non-answer was seen as a brilliant answer. One fool move is followed by another until some says that we are in the presence of genius. No one is willing to expose the Emperor as having no clothes. The only threat is exposure by those who knew the genius when he was living on crumbs on the street. Those people need to be eliminated.

“The Career of Nicodemus Dyzma” is well worth the read regardless of which level of allegory you most prefer. It flows smoothly, has a great deal of tongue-in-cheek humor to enjoy. For readers always relishing in the exposure of the endless flaws and inequities in humanity, especially in its ruling circles.

Thank you to Northwestern University Press and NetGalley for the eArc.

This is a book with a premise you've read/seen before - a random dude goes to the right party and says something in front of the right people, and is all of the sudden popular because bored, rich people love anything new. You follow Dyzma on his adventurous path, and it is really an enjoyable novel.

The Career of Nicodemus Dyzma is a delightful, entertaining read. The biting political satire explores how even the most incompetent person can rise to a position of power through chance, misunderstandings and sheer bravado. Dyzma is an engaging character. You can't help but enjoy following his adventures, even if you cringe at their ramifications. The prose is easy reading, suggesting a sensitive translation from the Polish, and the story moved along at a good pace, with plenty of action and amusement along the way. An easy 4.5 stars from me.

I received this book as a free eBook ARC via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.