INSATIABILITY

Twenty years after his war-triggered suicide in 1939, Witkiewicz was to become a cult figure in Eastern European avant-garde theater, with ""Witkacy"" a magic name. Here is his massive major fiction in its first English translation--a two-part fantasy obsessed, as was Witkiewicz' theater work, with the Decline of the West. Written in 1927, it is highly experimental, a patchwork of straight-forward narration, stage-like dialogues, and more free-associative passages. Translator Iribarne begins with a long biographical and critical introduction to Witkiewicz' work and comments on the challenges of the translation.