What do you think?
Rate this book
Vargmonstret
"Зверочеловекоморок" - это детская сказка для взрослых, в которой вымысел сочетается с лирикой, философией и сатирой. Исповедь мальчика, который смотрит на мир вокруг, со свойственной ему наивностью, и делиться своими впечатлениями.
206 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1969
6 people are currently reading
180 people want to read
About the author
Tadeusz Konwicki
35 books106 followersProse writer, screenwriter and film director. Founder of the 'cinema d'auteur' in Poland and author of 20 books. Born in 1926 in Nowa Wilejka, near Vilnius (today Naujoji Vilnia, Lithuania), died on January 7th in Warsaw at 88 years old.
Konwicki was educated at the Universities of Cracow and Warsaw and began writing for newspapers and periodicals. He served on the editorial boards of leading literary magazines and followed the official Communist Party line. His first work, Przy budowie (1950; “At the Construction Site”), won the State Prize for Literature. He began a career as a filmmaker and scriptwriter in 1956; his film Ostatni dzień lata (“The Last Day of Summer”) won the Venice Film Festival Grand Prix in 1958. By the late 1960s he had quit the Communist Party, lost his job in the official film industry, and become active in the opposition movement.
Konwicki’s work is suffused with guilt and anxiety, coloured by his wartime experiences and a sense of helplessness in confronting a corrupt and repressive society. Chief among his novels are Rojsty (1956; “The Marshes”) and Sennik wspóczesny (1963; A Dreambook for Our Time), a book that writer and critic Czesław Miłosz called “one of the most terrifying novels of postwar Polish literature.” His other works of that period are Wniebowsta̦pienie (1967; “Ascension”) and Zwierzoczłekoupiór (1969; The Anthropos-Spectre-Beast). His later books—including Kompleks polski (1977; The Polish Complex), the bitterly mocking Mała apokalipsa (1979; A Minor Apocalypse), and the lyrical Bohiń (1987; Bohin Manor)—confront Poland’s social cataclysms of the late 1970s and the ’80s. The autobiographical Wschody i zachody ksie̦życa (1981; Moonrise, Moonset) recounts some of Konwicki’s experiences during the period of martial law in Poland.
Konwicki was educated at the Universities of Cracow and Warsaw and began writing for newspapers and periodicals. He served on the editorial boards of leading literary magazines and followed the official Communist Party line. His first work, Przy budowie (1950; “At the Construction Site”), won the State Prize for Literature. He began a career as a filmmaker and scriptwriter in 1956; his film Ostatni dzień lata (“The Last Day of Summer”) won the Venice Film Festival Grand Prix in 1958. By the late 1960s he had quit the Communist Party, lost his job in the official film industry, and become active in the opposition movement.
Konwicki’s work is suffused with guilt and anxiety, coloured by his wartime experiences and a sense of helplessness in confronting a corrupt and repressive society. Chief among his novels are Rojsty (1956; “The Marshes”) and Sennik wspóczesny (1963; A Dreambook for Our Time), a book that writer and critic Czesław Miłosz called “one of the most terrifying novels of postwar Polish literature.” His other works of that period are Wniebowsta̦pienie (1967; “Ascension”) and Zwierzoczłekoupiór (1969; The Anthropos-Spectre-Beast). His later books—including Kompleks polski (1977; The Polish Complex), the bitterly mocking Mała apokalipsa (1979; A Minor Apocalypse), and the lyrical Bohiń (1987; Bohin Manor)—confront Poland’s social cataclysms of the late 1970s and the ’80s. The autobiographical Wschody i zachody ksie̦życa (1981; Moonrise, Moonset) recounts some of Konwicki’s experiences during the period of martial law in Poland.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 23 of 23 reviews
November 29, 2018
Synopsis: Smug, know-it-all little boy meets smug, know-it-all Investigator Dog. "Adventures" ensue.
What an odd, surreal, sometimes sorrowful, sometimes farcical lark this turned out to be.
Tadeusz Konwicki was a lauded Polish writer and film director who was active from the 1950s through the 90s. Sadly, I'm unfamiliar with his work. If his films are anything like this book, they are suffused with absurdity, melancholy, and strangeness.
What is this so-called "Anthropos-Spectre-Beast"?
Well,
So that's a lot for one little boy to hold, and a lot for a little book to hold as well.
Fortunately, Konwicki has a light touch and a sure hand, and he invests the proceedings with a careful attention to detail, a lot of flair, and a sense of humor that keeps things fun while still hinting at hidden depths all the while. Retep is an infernal nemesis, a Jungian shadow-self for our protagonist, and Peter's best friend - but only in his dreams. Peter's family are instantly recognizable types, but they have their own very human secret sides; Peter may dismiss them at first, but the reader soon sees how deeply he loves them all. Investigator Dog may be a guide to uncertain adventure but he is also a sad fellow with his own complicated agenda - just the sort of dog that Peter realizes he'd like as a friend. And Peter himself is a singular creation, full of a kind of mordant anti-life, sardonic and pretentious, addressing the reader in a most condescending fashion while revealing all of his understandable insecurities and hopes. This book is bizarre, smart, and overall a delight.
Except for the very ending!
Is the book for children? I think this is the sort of book that most kids would understand a lot better than most adults. So... a tentative yes? Depends on the child, I suppose.
My favorite part: after realizing that the girl down the block will probably never love him, Peter declares his love for an acacia tree across the street. A few days later, Peter realizes that he's totally over this acacia tree and in fact finds it distinctly annoying. That's so Peter.
What an odd, surreal, sometimes sorrowful, sometimes farcical lark this turned out to be.
Tadeusz Konwicki was a lauded Polish writer and film director who was active from the 1950s through the 90s. Sadly, I'm unfamiliar with his work. If his films are anything like this book, they are suffused with absurdity, melancholy, and strangeness.
What is this so-called "Anthropos-Spectre-Beast"?
Well,
The Anthropos-Spectre-Beast is everywhere about us throughout all our life. He is everything that is not understood in nature and mankind. He is the Unknown itself.Young Peter is aware of this Beast that haunts humanity but barely pays it any attention. (Much like most of us.) He has other things on his mind: his father has lost his job which causes much stress for the family, his secret peeks at his sister's diary has shown him an entirely different side to her, he's in love with the haughty girl down the block, he's acting in an experimental film about space travel in order to bring in some cash, and Investigator Dog keeps insisting that he travel to an alternate dimension in order to rescue a sick little girl and repeatedly confront his nemesis, a cruel lad named Retep - which of course is simply "Peter" spelled backwards. Oh, and an asteroid is on a collision course with Earth and it promises total annihilation - much to disillusioned, nihilistic Peter's delight.
So that's a lot for one little boy to hold, and a lot for a little book to hold as well.
Fortunately, Konwicki has a light touch and a sure hand, and he invests the proceedings with a careful attention to detail, a lot of flair, and a sense of humor that keeps things fun while still hinting at hidden depths all the while. Retep is an infernal nemesis, a Jungian shadow-self for our protagonist, and Peter's best friend - but only in his dreams. Peter's family are instantly recognizable types, but they have their own very human secret sides; Peter may dismiss them at first, but the reader soon sees how deeply he loves them all. Investigator Dog may be a guide to uncertain adventure but he is also a sad fellow with his own complicated agenda - just the sort of dog that Peter realizes he'd like as a friend. And Peter himself is a singular creation, full of a kind of mordant anti-life, sardonic and pretentious, addressing the reader in a most condescending fashion while revealing all of his understandable insecurities and hopes. This book is bizarre, smart, and overall a delight.
Except for the very ending!
Is the book for children? I think this is the sort of book that most kids would understand a lot better than most adults. So... a tentative yes? Depends on the child, I suppose.
"You see," said the director, "even a child knows what's wanted."Indeed!
"The reverse is true," said the script-writer. "The child understands that scientific accuracy would kill the poetry."
"That's just the trouble!" The director got annoyed again. "Poetry! In my job you can't just film things like naïve scientific fantasies, hackneyed psychological drama, or moral tales from the provinces. The story should be in the form of a fairy-tale or a philosophical tale, a metaphor for today's world, some new generalization."
My favorite part: after realizing that the girl down the block will probably never love him, Peter declares his love for an acacia tree across the street. A few days later, Peter realizes that he's totally over this acacia tree and in fact finds it distinctly annoying. That's so Peter.
March 16, 2018
A sort of un-fairy-tale for bored, cynical children who read too many books, perhaps. Except that Konwicki deftly mixes his flights of fancy with plenty of bitter all-too-real observation, disappointment, and philosophizing, to the point where I can't really tell who this is intended for. Though I'd like to think that a generation of clever 12-year-olds devoured this and came out as bright-eyed wonder-seeking skeptics. As a 29-year-old wonder-seeking skeptic, I ate this right up. Really, it might be more surrealism than fairy-tale.
Plotwise, we follow our terribly engaging narrator, Peter, as he observes the mundane despairs of his family and is soon offered an escape from his existential boredom when a talking great dane, the Investigator Dog, rings his bell and calls him away to an idyllic/ominous pastoral town of indeterminate time and place*. These two alternating threads are soon intertwined with a third, all bleeding together in their margins with a delicious ambiguity, carefully tended throughout. It's rather refreshing to come back to something so entertainingly plot-centered, for once, but that's not to say there's not plenty going on besides those. In particular, there's an eerie shadow over all of the proceedings:
Tadeusz Konwicki was born in 1926, near Vilnius, in what was then Poland but soon to become Lithuania. Serving as a Home Army Partisan during the war, he fought first the Nazis and then the Russians, narrowly escaping the Gulag to reach Warsaw and a career in journalism. Initially optimistic, he embraced the promises of Communism and state-mandated Socialist Realism, only to become disillusioned by the mid-50s and to join the neo-realism-influenced vanguard of the Polish Film School along with Andrzej Wajda and Wojciech Has. And like Has, Konwicki turned increasingly towards surrealism and Poland's pre-Communist past. This novel, written in 1969, foresees some of the shifting narrative structure and thematic concerns of what may be his cinematic masterpiece, How Near, How Far Away (1972, a year before Has' equally fine Bruno Schulz adaptation The Hourglass Sanatorium).
*Konwicki obsessives will quickly recognize it as the nostalgic dreamworld of his inter-war Lithuanian childhood.
Plotwise, we follow our terribly engaging narrator, Peter, as he observes the mundane despairs of his family and is soon offered an escape from his existential boredom when a talking great dane, the Investigator Dog, rings his bell and calls him away to an idyllic/ominous pastoral town of indeterminate time and place*. These two alternating threads are soon intertwined with a third, all bleeding together in their margins with a delicious ambiguity, carefully tended throughout. It's rather refreshing to come back to something so entertainingly plot-centered, for once, but that's not to say there's not plenty going on besides those. In particular, there's an eerie shadow over all of the proceedings:
When and where does he make himself known? He is always present in those strange moments that we remember for the rest of our life. He is present in our sudden awakening from sleep in the late afternoon, when we see through the window a red sun setting and hear the loud twittering of sparrows squabbling in the road, and feel the first puff of evening air that fills the curtain. For a moment everything seems strange and frightening, as if we had just entered the world for the first time. In that moment the Anthropos-Specter-Beast is very near.
Tadeusz Konwicki was born in 1926, near Vilnius, in what was then Poland but soon to become Lithuania. Serving as a Home Army Partisan during the war, he fought first the Nazis and then the Russians, narrowly escaping the Gulag to reach Warsaw and a career in journalism. Initially optimistic, he embraced the promises of Communism and state-mandated Socialist Realism, only to become disillusioned by the mid-50s and to join the neo-realism-influenced vanguard of the Polish Film School along with Andrzej Wajda and Wojciech Has. And like Has, Konwicki turned increasingly towards surrealism and Poland's pre-Communist past. This novel, written in 1969, foresees some of the shifting narrative structure and thematic concerns of what may be his cinematic masterpiece, How Near, How Far Away (1972, a year before Has' equally fine Bruno Schulz adaptation The Hourglass Sanatorium).
*Konwicki obsessives will quickly recognize it as the nostalgic dreamworld of his inter-war Lithuanian childhood.
November 23, 2016
An oddball curio from Polish filmmaker and novelist containing an Inspector Dog and a rather formal and pompous teenage narrator. Read Nate’s excellent review for more.
January 24, 2019
With cometary apocalypse imminent, young Peter teams up with Investigator Dog (a reincarnated English explorer trapped in the body of a slobbering, valerian-sniffing Great Dane) to traverse the barrier between our world and a parallel universe to rescue a beautiful young girl from the clutches of her evil pseudo-sibling Retep. Meanwhile, Peter reads his sister's diary and secretly wins a role in a low-budget sci-fi movie in which he plays an evil kid astronaut named Retep.
That's just the tip of the iceberg. Konwicki's works are impossible to elucidate. They are loopy and seem unthreatening and then they'll throw you for a loop with their mischievous surreality and hyperbolic and profound musings (especially regarding the titular monster). Quite unlike anything else I've read!
That's just the tip of the iceberg. Konwicki's works are impossible to elucidate. They are loopy and seem unthreatening and then they'll throw you for a loop with their mischievous surreality and hyperbolic and profound musings (especially regarding the titular monster). Quite unlike anything else I've read!
August 23, 2019
A surreal fantasy, translated from the original Polish. As an adult, I'd probably be annoyed by the ending, but the book is so trippy and weird that I enjoyed it as a kid. Another GoodReads reviewer called it, "A sort of un-fairy-tale for bored, cynical children who read too many books". That sounds like me at age 13-14, for sure.
July 15, 2020
Peter is a boy who is contemplating a comet (or is it an asteroid?) that is threatening to wipe out all life on earth. He feels that perhaps, considering how mundane and hopeless things are for him and his family, it may be better if earth was put out of his misery. Then when he couldn't feel less numb towards life, the Investigator Dog enters the picture and sweeps him away to a strange yet familiar world where his evil doppelganger lives. Then there's his love interest, a film studio, a belligerent chicken and of course the Anthropos-Spectre-Beast.
The Anthropos-Spectre-Beast is (as described by our young narrator):
"...everything that is not understood in nature and mankind. He is the Unknown itself. No one has ever seen him, but everyone is well acquainted with him."
The above quote gives pretty good indication of the melancholy and existential worry within this book. But this is also one of the funniest books I've every read. It's so rare for me to audibly laugh or unconsciously smile while reading, but it happened quite often here. I honestly can't recommend this enough.
The Anthropos-Spectre-Beast is (as described by our young narrator):
"...everything that is not understood in nature and mankind. He is the Unknown itself. No one has ever seen him, but everyone is well acquainted with him."
The above quote gives pretty good indication of the melancholy and existential worry within this book. But this is also one of the funniest books I've every read. It's so rare for me to audibly laugh or unconsciously smile while reading, but it happened quite often here. I honestly can't recommend this enough.
November 20, 2025
Na bardzo długo zostanie ze mną ta książka
przeurocza, przezabawna, przesmutna
przeurocza, przezabawna, przesmutna
March 5, 2025
naprawdę bardzo ciekawe i przyjemne (może poza paroma bardzo niepotrzebnymi komentarzami ale nie oczekuję cudów po książce z lat 70)
January 3, 2018
Piotr är ett ett barn som tror sig vara en vuxen i ett barns kropp. Högmod är en av hans starkare kvalitéer. Jorden hotas av undergång och en talande hund visar honom vägen till en annan värld. Det finns en hel del lovande aspekter som jag tycker Konwicki inte riktigt tar vara på. Det blir lite hafsigt och lite för lite av allt. Inte ens när Piotr får jobb inom filmen tar det sig riktigt. Och slutet, som kunnat bli slagkraftigt, känns som en obetydlig smekning mot min kind. Det är inte dåligt egentligen. Bara inte bra.
July 8, 2013
Стара, хубава книга от моето детство.
Колко книги от полски автори се издават днес?
Колко книги от полски автори се издават днес?
August 21, 2016
A philosophical fairytale for adults. Super funny and heartbreakingly sad.
November 17, 2025
Początek podobał mi się bardzo. Wstępne poznanie bohatera, jego nastawienia do świata, było cudownym portretem pretensjonalności i dziecka, któremu wydaje się, że jest dorosłe i wszystko już wie. Również przedstawienie poczucia braku poczucia sensu i wszechobecnego marazmu było idealne.
W momencie, kiedy rozpoczęła się akcja z psem i podróżami momentalnie straciłam zainteresowanie. Usilnie próbowałam doszukać się w tych scenach jakiegoś znaczenia, jakiejś paraleli do rzeczywistego życia Piotra. Pewne rzeczy wydaje mi się, że intuicyjnie wyczułam, ale czuję się trochę, jakbym na siłę próbowała szukać wytłumaczenia. Myślę, że wątek w drugim świecie był po prostu zbyt chaotyczny, za szybki, za mało było momentów refleksji.
Miałam nadzieję, że końcówka ześle na mnie olśnienie i doznam efektu "eureka!". Ale niezbyt mnie ono satysfakcjonuje. Czuję się, jakbym całą książkę kombinowała o co w tym chodzi, szukała ukrytego sensu, a na końcu ktoś mi powiedział, że to i tak wszystko było tylko snem i wyjaśnienia nie ma. A nawet jeśli widzę w tym pewną logikę, nadal uważam, że jest to niepotrzebne nadbudowywanie pola interpretacji. Przerost formy nad treścią.
Daję 7/10, ponieważ początek był doskonały, jest to niewątpliwie książka, którą można szeroko interpretować, ale jednak miejscami nużyła i końcówka lekko zawiodła
W momencie, kiedy rozpoczęła się akcja z psem i podróżami momentalnie straciłam zainteresowanie. Usilnie próbowałam doszukać się w tych scenach jakiegoś znaczenia, jakiejś paraleli do rzeczywistego życia Piotra. Pewne rzeczy wydaje mi się, że intuicyjnie wyczułam, ale czuję się trochę, jakbym na siłę próbowała szukać wytłumaczenia. Myślę, że wątek w drugim świecie był po prostu zbyt chaotyczny, za szybki, za mało było momentów refleksji.
Miałam nadzieję, że końcówka ześle na mnie olśnienie i doznam efektu "eureka!". Ale niezbyt mnie ono satysfakcjonuje. Czuję się, jakbym całą książkę kombinowała o co w tym chodzi, szukała ukrytego sensu, a na końcu ktoś mi powiedział, że to i tak wszystko było tylko snem i wyjaśnienia nie ma. A nawet jeśli widzę w tym pewną logikę, nadal uważam, że jest to niepotrzebne nadbudowywanie pola interpretacji. Przerost formy nad treścią.
Daję 7/10, ponieważ początek był doskonały, jest to niewątpliwie książka, którą można szeroko interpretować, ale jednak miejscami nużyła i końcówka lekko zawiodła
September 7, 2025
Förlåt men va? En sjuk grabb fantiserar om att han är hjälten. Själva fantasin höll inte som berättelse i sig. Det intressanta med Vargmonstret (som han beskriver som panikångest ungefär) utforskas nästan inte alls.
Det hade kunnat vara ungefär som Mio min Mio, eller Bröderna Lejonhjärta, men tyvärr var ju berättelsen bara konstig.
Det hade kunnat vara ungefär som Mio min Mio, eller Bröderna Lejonhjärta, men tyvärr var ju berättelsen bara konstig.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
March 13, 2021
a know it all ironic child and a talking dog wander around some different set pieces and it's all very mysterious and slavic and doesn't really seem like a children's book even though that's what the blurb says it is.
May 30, 2018
super weird book. but you'll understand it all in the end
May 8, 2019
Troszkę zmurszało, zwłaszcza w sferze obyczajowej. Daje jednak radę.
August 21, 2022
Surprisingly i don't actually mind the ending
December 12, 2023
Oryginalna
June 5, 2020
Открывающаяся словами «Эта книжка - не для примерных детей», но с первых строк повествующая историю от имени 12-летнего мальчика, „Зверочеловекоморок” Тадеуша Конвицкого как раз очень похожа на книгу для детей, - проста, фантастична, инфантильно-романтична и откровенно-доверчива.
Читается легко, почти на одном дыхании. Раньше я называла такое чтение словом «проглотить», пока оно не приобрело для меня несколько иной оттенок.
Кто такой Зверочеловекоморок?... Лучше героя книги о нем никто не расскажет...
Реальность в этой книги не совсем реальна, а Сказка не такая уж сказочная, и уж точно не имеет хэппи-энда.
Читается легко, почти на одном дыхании. Раньше я называла такое чтение словом «проглотить», пока оно не приобрело для меня несколько иной оттенок.
Кто такой Зверочеловекоморок?... Лучше героя книги о нем никто не расскажет...
Он неизменно оказывается рядом в те странные минуты, которые запоминаются на всю жизнь. Он поджидает нас при внезапном пробуждении, когда, задремав после обеда, мы вдруг просыпаемся и видим за окном багровое заходящее солнце, слышим чириканье воробьев, дерущихся посреди дороги, ощущаем дуновение ветра, теребящего занавеску на окне. В первую секунду все кажется нам чужим, пугающим, незнакомым, будто мы только сейчас родились на свет. Вот тогда он, Зверочеловекоморок, тут как тут.
Реальность в этой книги не совсем реальна, а Сказка не такая уж сказочная, и уж точно не имеет хэппи-энда.
November 12, 2012
Konstig, det är enda sättet för mig att beskriva den. Sundtals är den både vacker och gripande men största delen av tiden sitter jag bara och tänker "va? vad händer egentligen?". Sagan är lite för fort berättad. Den är full av oväsentliga detaljer men sånt man verkligen skulle vilja veta talas det inte om alls.
Under hela tiden jag läste fick jag en slags känsla av hopplöshet och kaos som dröjde kvar långt efter att jag lagt ner boken. Utan tivel det mest deprimerande jag nånsin läst.
Under hela tiden jag läste fick jag en slags känsla av hopplöshet och kaos som dröjde kvar långt efter att jag lagt ner boken. Utan tivel det mest deprimerande jag nånsin läst.
May 19, 2015
про те, що навіть у безнайдійних ситуаціях завжди є вибір і альтернативні варіанти.
дивна, сюрреалістична штука, яка постійно трмимає в очікуванні підступу. підступ не змушує себе довго чекати.
а далі нічого немає.
дивна, сюрреалістична штука, яка постійно трмимає в очікуванні підступу. підступ не змушує себе довго чекати.
а далі нічого немає.
November 10, 2024
I didnt like the story and it was very hard to read this book to the end. The plot is about a boy who are bored and lonely. It happens strange things. I annonyed of all the characters. In the end of the book happens a plot twist who explains why the book is so strange.
Displaying 1 - 23 of 23 reviews