Killing Auntie<\/span><\/i> was first published in Poland in 1969, but a contemporary reader cannot help but acknowledge the themes of the story reflected in the current state of the world: a unique time of conflicting brutality and utter boredom. For us, the brutality is the pandemic that has uprooted the way we live, and the boredom of the new normal we must endure. However, for Jurek, his incessant apathy for life was the very cause of his own brutality – that is, murdering and defiling the corpse of his only caregiver, his Auntie.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n The plot of the story is inane and the aforementioned contrast of boredom and brutality is mirrored in many other conflicting aspects in the book: the wit of the dialogue, the graphic description of the young man murdering, cutting up, and attempting to house his Auntie\u2019s dead rotting body. And whilst this is a novel about murder, it is undoubtedly not a murder novel.<\/span><\/p>\n Jurek concedes that he has murdered his maternal aunt, but does not identify as a murderer. Instead he justifies his act as \u201cthe result of so many interlocking mental states, of complexes and depression\u201d. That makes the narrative all the more interesting since we are not reading the story of a serial killer, a psychopath, a maniac, but simply a young person whose unavailing life presented him with something to do that day.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n