Abstract

Suicide. Carpathian novel by Władysław Sabowski is considered to be the first mod­ern Polish crime fiction. It focuses on crime, but there is no riddle or a way leading to the solution of the mystery. The suspense intertwines with the author’s ethnographic ambitions. The motif of mountains is used not only to present the murder, and “Carpathianity”, as suggested by the subtitle, is realised on a few levels: space, mate­rial culture, the bandit myth and allusions to the literature on mountains. Suicide may be considered to be a popular regional novel.