The latest addition to my website is Tadeusz Dołęga-Mostowicz‘s Kariera Nikodema Dyzmy (The Career of Nicodemus Dyzma). While very well-known in Poland, if this book is known in the English-speaking world, it is because Jerzy Kosinski borrowed extensively from it for his novel Being There. It tells the story of a poor young man, down on his luck, who manages, by dint of carefully listening to people and parroting what they said, saying very little himself and using the ideas of others, gradually rises to the top, being offered the post of prime minister. It is very cleverly done, as Dyzma keeps falling on his feet, both in terms of career and love life, while essentially being not very bright and being thoroughly amoral. Dołęga-Mostowicz is clearly mocking the corruption of contemporary Poland while giving us an original character whose name is now a byword in Poland for a phony, a fraud, especially one whose trickery depends on others’ assumptions, self-deceptions, and moral shortcoming. It is nice to have the book in English, nearly ninety years after its first publication in Polish, allowing us, if we want, to judge how much Kosinksi borrowed. However, read the book for its own merits and forget Kosinski,