ABSTRACT
In this chapter, I consider in what ways Sławomir Mrożek’s plays and works of fiction align with or depart from the lines used to configure absurdist literature, established by various critics, principally Martin Esslin. I argue that the work he produced while living in Poland, or reminiscent of living under its totalitarian regime while in emigration, adheres most convincingly to the features used to define the absurd. And I further argue that Mrożek’s work, consistently biting, has acquired additional currency in the teeth of renewed and newly emergent crises in the first decades of the twenty-first century, including the decline of so-called democracies, and the concomitant resurgence of dictatorships, as well as a brutal war of invasion and conquest in Eastern Europe.
