ABSTRACT
Considered a transgressive game-changer in Polish literary culture, Michał Witkowski’s Lovetown masterfully juxtaposes the lives of pre-emancipatory, anti-assimilationist queers from “the long 1970s” with those of pro-emancipatory, Westward-oriented gay men from the 1990s. The chapter offers a comparative reading of the French and English translations of the novel (by Madeleine Naselik and William Martin, respectively), showing how specific word choices and semantic modifications diverge from the original text to reflect contemporary linguistic practices informed by heteronormativity and homonormativity. The author argues that these strategies significantly distort the queer reality of the 1970s Poland, reproducing harmful stereotypes about non-normative/LGBTQ+ communities.
