One of the indisputable totems of twentieth-century world literature, Witold Gombrowicz wrote Pornografia after leaving his native Poland for Argentina in 1939 and then watching from afar as the German invasion destroyed his country. Translated for the first time into English from the original Polish by award-winning translator Danuta Borchardt, Pornografia is one of Gombrowicz’s highest regarded works—a richly imagined tale of violence and carnality set in wartime Poland. In the midst of the German occupation, two aging intellectuals travel to a farm in the countryside, looking for a respite from the hellish scene in Warsaw. They quickly grow bored of their bucolic surroundings—that is, until they are hypnotized by a pair of country youths who have grown up alongside each other at the farm. The older men are determined to orchestrate a tryst between the two teenagers, but they are soon distracted by a string of violent developments, including an order from the underground movement for the men to assassinate a rogue resistance captain who has sought refuge with them. The erotic games are put on hold—until the two dissolute intellectuals find a way to involve their pawns in the murderous plot.

維托爾德•貢布羅維奇（Witold Gombrowicz, 1904-1969），波蘭著名小說傢、劇作傢，被米蘭•昆德拉譽為“我們這個世紀最偉大的小說傢之一”，與卡夫卡、穆齊爾、布魯赫並稱為“中歐四傑”。

貢布羅維奇齣生於波蘭，曾在華沙大學學習法學，後赴法國深造兩年。1939年橫渡大西洋到阿根廷後，適逢二戰爆發，滯留南美達二十四年之久。1963年獲得福特基金會全年奬金，在柏林逗留。1964年，他到法國南部的旺斯定居，1967年獲得國際文學奬。1969年7月24日，貢布羅維奇在旺斯辭世。貢布羅維奇用母語寫作，作品被翻譯成多種語言齣版，由於他不接受二戰後的政治體係，他的大部分作品都不得在波蘭齣版，直到1986年，波蘭纔齣版瞭他的全集。