Witold Marian Gombrowicz (August 4, 1904 – July 24, 1969) was a Polish writer and playwright. His works are characterised by deep psychological analysis, a certain sense of paradox and absurd, anti-nationalist flavor. In 1937 he published his first novel, Ferdydurke, which presented many of his usual themes: problems of immaturity and youth, creation of identity in interactions with others, and an ironic, critical examination of class roles in Polish society and culture. He gained fame only during the last years of his life, but is now considered one of the foremost figures of Polish literature. His diaries were published in 1969 and are, according to the Paris Review, "widely considered his masterpiece", while Cosmos is considered, according to The New Yorker, "his most accomplished novel". He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature four times, from 1966 to 1969. Biography Polish years Gombrowicz was born in Małoszyce near Opatów, then in Radom Governorate, Congress Poland, Russian Empire, to a wealthy gentry family. He was the youngest of four children of Jan and Antonina (née Ścibor-Kotkowska of the Clan of Ostoja). In an autobiographical piece, A Kind of Testament, he wrote that his family had lived for 400 years in Lithuania on an estate between Vilnius and Kaunas but were displaced after his grandfather was accused of participating in the January Uprising of 1863. He later described his family origins and social status as early instances of a lifelong sense of being "between" (entre). In 1911 his family moved to Warsaw. After completing his education at Saint Stanislaus Kostka's Gymnasium in 1922, Gombrowicz studied law at Warsaw University, earning a MJur in 1927. He spent a year in Paris, where he studied at the Institute of Higher International Studies (French: Institut des Hautes Etudes Internationales). He was less than diligent in his studies, but his time in France brought him in constant contact with other young intellectuals. He also visited the Mediterranean. When Gombrowicz returned to Poland he began applying for legal positions with little success. In the 1920s he started writing. He soon rejected the legendary novel, whose form and subject matter were supposed to manifest his "worse" and darker side of nature. Similarly, his attempt to write a popular novel in collaboration with Tadeusz Kępiński was a failure. At the turn of the 1920s and 1930s Gombrowicz began to write short stories, later printed under the title