In her study, Karoline Thaidigsmann explores the role of crossover fiction in Polish literature after 1989. She emphasizes the crucial function of writing that blurs the borderline between traditionally separate readerships—children and adults—in the reassessment of self-conceptions of Polish culture after the breakdown of communism. In consequence, cross writing and, accordingly, cross reading are interpreted in the context of negotiations and renegotiations of national identity. The first chapter explains the theoretical framework and examines the potentials of crossover literature in its combination of child and adult discourses (esp. 39–48). The second chapter outlines the context of crossover fiction with regard do debates on infantilism or childishness (in German: Kindlichkeit) in Poland. Based on the writings of Bolesław Prus, Stanisław Brzozowski, and Witold Gombrowicz, Thaidigsmann discusses the idea that immaturity is a salient feature of Polish culture and, thus, Polish self-descriptions. In addition, this chapter sheds light on the profound changes in Polish discourses on cultural immaturity after the establishment of communist rule and highlights the complex development of these discourses after 1989, when a new political, social, and cultural reality emerged. Thaidigsmann's conclusion that crossover fiction plays a major role in the reshaping of Polish identity after the end of communism is convincing. One might object, however, that the study focuses on infantilism or rather childishness and does not take into consideration adolescence as a separate aspect prevalent in Polish self-descriptions of cultural immaturity.
Another chapter deals with concrete examples of cross writing, covering the period from 1989 to 2017. Thaidigsmann deals with different areas where crossover fiction, based on varying amalgamations of genres and traditions, comes into its own as a way of rearranging Polish cultural identity. She discusses Andrzej Czcibor-Piotrowski's trilogy Rzeczy nienasycone (1999), Cud w Esfahanie (2002), Nigdy dość. Mirakle (2011) as a striking example of crossover fiction that combines different genres such as childhood literature, adventure tales, documentary prose, and deportation literature. In this perspective, cross writing is truly transgressive as it brings together, at first glance, mutually exclusive subjects like adventure and childhood on the one hand and Stalinist terror on the other. Crossover literature is furthermore discussed as a thought-provoking challenge to established discourses after 1989, among others with reference to Jacek Dukaj's Wroniec (2009). Thaidigsmann explains in detail, how—framed as a fairy tale for children—this novel about martial law in Poland tells a fantasy-like adventure of a young boy during December 1981. The study demonstrates, with further examples of crossover fiction, how the reality of Polish history and discourses of Polish identity are defamiliarized within the framework of children's literature. Among the topics discussed are works of Dorota Terakowska: Córka czarownic (1991), Samotność Bogów (1998), and Poczwarka (2001); Tomek Trzyzna: Panna Nikt (1993); Kinga Dunin: Tabu (1998), Obciach (1999); Tomasz Piątek: Podręcznik dla klasy pierwszej (2011); and Natalia Osińska: Fanfik (2016) and Slash (2017). Thaidigsmann shows how cross writing creates a third space of communication where children's literature and adult literature are inseparably intertwined in a new and challenging rearrangement of identity discourses. The illustrations at the end of the study (343–65, in color) show book covers and demonstrate to what extent crossover literature entails a special approach to book design; although aimed at an adult public the use of graphics familiar from children's literature is common practice.
Thaidigsmann's study is a remarkable achievement and provides deep insight into the forms and strategies of crossover fiction in Poland after 1989. With its focus on crossover writing this book stands out in the field of Slavic Studies. One misses, however, a broader contextualization, especially in due consideration of comparable international tendencies. Suffice it to say that in his famous essay Cross the border—Close the gap (1969), one of the essential programmatic texts of postmodern theory, Leslie Fiedler called for a new kind of literature that should close the gap between high and popular culture—hence cross the line between hitherto mutually exclusive realms of communication—and create new forms that would integrate different genres (Science Fiction, Pornography, and Westerns) into the literary discourse. Unfortunately, Thaidigsmann's study lacks any discussion of such related phenomena and, hence, a broader contextualization of cross writing. That said, her book is nevertheless a profound and pioneering study on crossover fiction in Polish literature and will surely instigate further research.
