Possessed (Polish: Opętani) is a 1939 novel by the Polish writer Witold Gombrowicz, published under the pseudonym Zdzisław Niewieski. It is a pastiche of gothic and serial novels in the vein of Horace Walpole and Eugène Sue.^[1]

Publication

The novel was serialised in the summer 1939 in two Polish daily newspapers, under the pseudonym Zdzisław Niewieski.^[2] Only the first two parts were published before the outbreak of World War II. Witold Gombrowicz never claimed authorship of the work until a few days before his death in 1969. It was first published in book form in 1973 and translated from a French translation into English in 1980 by J. A. Underwood. In 1986, the three final parts of the novel were discovered. The full version was published in 1990 and a new English complete translation by Antonia Lloyd-Jones was published in 2023.^[1]