Polish echoes of the French new novel

This article presents the reception of the French new novel in Poland. The author describes polemics caused by Polish translations of Butor's, Robbe-Grillet's, Simon's and Sarraute's novels. If Polish publishers' interest in the new novel ebbed very quickly, literary critics and especially university researchers in Poland have been observing its evolution attentively. Also in the Polish novel of the second half of the 20th century, one can find some tendencies analogous to the French new novel. However, Polish "new novelists" are not always eager to recognize their French colleagues' influence and they prefer either to underline the originality of their work or to find their Polish forerunners (for example Gombrowicz, Witkacy and Irzykowski).