Snow White and Russian Red by Dorota Masłowska (translated from Wojna polsko-ruska pod flagą biało-czerwoną = Polish-Russian War Under White-Red Flag; UK edition = White and Red) (2002)
A hit in 21-year-old Maslowska's native Poland and elsewhere in Europe, this punishing successor to first-person "lad" novels like Trainspotting serves up its nastiness spiked with pitch-black humor. Young, paranoid Polish speed fiend Andrzej "Nails" Robakoski presents himself, in hyperbolic stream-of-speech, as an ignoble chump morbidly obsessed with death whose trampy blonde girlfriend Magda has just dumped him. Living at home with a working but absent mother and felonious "bro," Nails adheres to a busy schedule of snorting lines, scarfing "Bird Milkies" (or chocolate-covered marshmallows), text-messaging and denouncing both American consumerism and Russian bootlegged goods. After Magda, Nails--mindlessly nationalist, misogynist, homophobic, racist and anti-Semitic--turns to anorexic virgin Angela, a Goth girl in black whom he feeds drugs and sexually assaults. Eventually, Nails is incarcerated for stealing a soda and walkie-talkie from a local McDonald's. In a hokey metafictional twist, he encounters "Dorota Maslowska," a teenage writer working as a typist at the jail, and then, after a collision with a prison wall, enters a hallucinatory state not much different from his waking life and from which the rest of the novel emerges. Paloff's translation is pitch-perfectly speedy, and with political ironies resounding throughout, it's clear that Maslowska is not exactly endorsing her blank generation, though the claustrophobic narrative presents few avenues of escape.
http://www.amazon.com/Snow-White-Russian-Dorota-Maslowska/dp/0802170013/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1310221641&sr=8-1
I grew interested in reading more Polish literature recently and this is one of the books I was recommended. I wanted to read works by Polish authors since I had only read books set in Poland or mentioning Poland or about Poland, but usually by foreign authors and rarely translated from Polish (usually written in English only and not having been translated from Polish). I look forward to reading this more contemporary piece instead of running instantly to classics, along the lines of Pan Tadeusz and other Polish Romantic works.
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