Snow White and Russian Red - Vendido!

Dorota Maslowska
208 pages
Grove Press, Black Cat (March 12, 2005)
World rights: Grove / Atlantic, Inc.

Rights sold:
*** Record (Brasil) ***
Kiepenheuer & Witsch (Germany),
De Bezige Bij (Holland),
Grijalbo Mondadori (Spain),
Atlantic Books (UK),
Euromedia (Czech),
Ikar (Slovak),
Lampa i Iskra Boza (Poland),
Frassinelli (Italy),
Europa (Hungary),
Inostranka (Russia),
Noir Sur Blanc (France).


The audacious debut novel by Polish newcomer Dorota Maslowska—that quickly became a controversial, acclaimed bestseller in both Poland and Germany—now an international sensation, with rights sold in ten languages

Book description:
Reminiscent of Irvine Welsh’s Trainspotting or a Polish slacker Naked Lunch, SNOW WHITE AND RUSSIAN RED is a fresh and surprising portrait of marginalized, fatalistic post-Communist youth. It is the story of Andrzej “Nails” Robakoski and his unraveling after his girlfriend Magda dumps him. A tracksuited slacker who spends most of his time doing little more than searching for his next line of speed and dreaming up conspiracy theories about the Polish economy, Nails ricochets from Magda, a doomed beauty who bewitches men, to Angela, a proselytizing vegetarian Goth, to Natasha, a hellcat who tears his house apart looking for speed, to Ala, the nerdy economics-student girlfriend of the friend who stole Magda. Through it all, a xenophobic campaign against the proliferating Russian black market escalates, to the point where the citizens have to paint their houses in national colors and one of these girls will be crowned Miss No Russkies Day—or is that just in Nails’ fevered mind?

Using inventive and visceral language, and by turns poetic, hilarious, disturbing, and dirty, SNOW WHITE AND RUSSIAN RED is a powerful portrait of love, hopelessness and political burnout in today’s Eastern Europe. The Polish critic Marcin Swietlicki called this novel “a chunk of slightly spoiled literary meat,” continuing, “I think it has been worth living 40 years to finally read something so interesting.”


Quotes and reviews:

It’s hard to believe that Maslowska’s protagonist, the young, disaffected Polish slacker Andrzej "Nails" Robakowski, was conjured by a woman (and a 19-year-old at that); his voice is one of the most authentic to emerge in fiction in years. Here, he narrates the story of his life over a three-day period. This mostly involves women, speed, sickness, and slandering "Russkis" (who, as far as Nails is concerned, are waging some kind of war for Poland’s soul). Nails’s voice is chaotic and brilliantly idiosyncratic.

He’s paranoid, apocalyptic, and chock-full of gallows humor, spitting the kind of crazy and highly original lines you want to quote to your friends; a girl might be described as a "reticent chimney sweep," a "pro-family cunt," or "thirty-three kilos of steaming despair." The stream-of-consciousness style and confusing ending may frustrate some readers (a metafiction trick is even thrown in for good measure, but it’s unclear how much it resolves).

Not for everyone, this thoroughly unique debut (winner of Poland’s Polityka Prize) is destined to become a cult classic. Highly recommended for large public libraries and all experimental and international fiction collections.]

--- STARRED Library Journal
_______

http://www.cafebabel.com/en/article.asp?T=T&Id=1690
Russophobia, Sex and Speed
Dorota Maslowska, Polish literature’s child prodigy, describes the misery of a generation caught between communism and EU membership.

“Literature is a window through which one people can look another in the eyes’. This is not the declaration of a great philosopher, but the words of Karl Dedecius, German translator of Polish literature and director of German-Polish Institute. Karl Dedecius is also the translator of the work of Dorota Maslowska, the latest Polist literary phenomenon, who opens a very similar window onto her people. In her first novel ’Schneeweiss und Russenrot’ (’Snow-White and Russian-Red’) the shooting star from Poland focuses on Andrzej. After his girlfriend leaves him, Andrzej wanders through the miserable grey apartment blocks of a small Polish city, looking for speed and fast sex, convinced that there’s nothing left to live for.

Andrzej represents many young people in Poland. He personifies a generation that doesn’t know where to turn. Caught between two worlds - the fall of communism and EU entry - it’s a generation which is desperately searching for its own Polish identity. A generation which is both drawn to the West, with all the opportunities it offers, and scared of it - scared of the prospect of ’selling-out’, of being steam-rollered. A generation which has derogatory things to say about Russians and communism, which wants to break with its dark past, but which is at the same time nostalgic about how cheap things were in the old days. The original title of the book reads “The Russo-Polish War fought under the white-red flag” (translated). Even though Dorota stresses that her book is non-political and that it merely depicts reality, its title refers to a political reality: Russophobia, following years of being ruled from Moscow, and the pursuit of a Polish identity, which people are desperately trying to discover and live out.

Lost but sensitive souls

Dorota Maslowska’s story paints a depressing picture of her generation. All values seem to have disappeared in post-communism Poland. This chaotic and grotesque depiction of a subculture laments the loss of a value system, where family was once important.

The book was a bestseller in Poland. The fact that it is written in slang is probably one of the reasons for its success. Just 18 years old when she wrote the book, Dorota Maslowska used her own type of language- vulgar, blatant and cool. Just the sort of language that appeals to young people. Questions of taste aside, the book is easy to read. It is relentless in its depiction of misery and hardship. According to the film producer Wiktor Grodezki, who is currently working on a screen play, the novel conveys the psychology of all young people in today’s Poland: they are lost souls but sensitive ones for all that. The book is mostly addressed at young people: at school and university, a subculture grown up in prefabricated houses and which has to discover its own identity in this period of transition. Even though reviewers have praised the finesse of this work, many young Polish people read the book only because of its popularity. They like the fact that it contains so much swearing. The sort of ranting that doesn’t go on much in real life.

All eyes on Europe

The book depicts the everyday life of young Polish people. However, every coin has two sides. Older people have deigned to view “Snow-White and Russian-Red” as literature. People are appalled by the poor level of language. Young intellectuals prefer to look to Europe and its opportunities. They have done away with their dark Russian past and a new self-confidence for their Polish origin is emerging. Despite the consistent depiction of young people’s misery in Poland in the prefabricated houses of this one small town, we shouldn’t forget that there is another Poland which is carving out its own future. A future full of hopes and aspirations with more opportunities than the elder generation could have dreamt of. The every day reality in a country that, following the collapse of communism has now opened the door to Europe, may seem dreary, but many people, and especially many young people, are dreaming of a future in a European Poland.”
Copyright © 2004 Babel International All Rights Reserved

“This very young woman has in her an unheard-of literary maturity. She has the gift of ripping apart, then mending, then destroying language into a pulp. From that pulp creating a familiar language, which is sometimes macabre and neck-breaking, always poetic, the possibilities of further growth seem immeasurable…The youngest generation, a generation completely lost to the oblivion of drugs, the internet, and predatory Polish capitalism, this completely lost generation is in luck because it has produced an author who will redeem it.”—Jerzy Pilch, Polityka (Poland)

“Dorota Masłowska is said to be the young voice of Poland. . . . The novel is bristling with energy; it is exhausting and wound up, disgusting and funny, a bit like a bumper car ride between book covers.”—Suddeutsche Zeitung (Germany)


From Poland:

“[Snow White and Russian Red] is a chunk of slightly spoiled literary meat. I think it has been worth living 40 years to finally read something so interesting.”—Marcin Swietlicki (critic)

“Masłowska, with extraordinary literary sensitivity, catches the language of society’s underbelly. But this is not only about language. The author portrays the whole world from the point of view of an idiot. . . . [Snow White and Russian Red] is a book that is simultaneously realistic and hyper-realistic. Prose which tastes like the poetry of a dirty street and filthy projects.”—Wojciech Staszewski, Gazeta Wyborna

“This very young woman has in her an unheard-of literary maturity. She has the gift of ripping apart, then mending, then destroying language into a pulp. From that pulp creating a familiar language, which is sometimes macabre and neck-breaking, always poetic, the possibilities of further growth seem immeasurable…The youngest generation, a generation completely lost to the oblivion of drugs, the internet, and predatory Polish capitalism, this completely lost generation is in luck because it has produced an author who will redeem it.”—Jerzy Pilch, Polityka

“In this country publishing young female authors (or male for that matter) is not common practice. . . . How did Masłowska receive such an honor? Maybe the originality of the subject: [Snow White and Russian Red] is the first novel from the tracksuit generation. Maybe with the surprising maturity of the text, or maybe simply with talent.”—Gala

“Masłowska portrays everydayness with acutely photographic precision. . . . The language the characters use is reminiscent of Orwell’s 1984. . . . Marcin Swetlicki described the novel as ‘a chunk of slightly spoiled literary meat.’ The meat is the intensive structure of the novel, the slight spoilage turns out to be reality. But this meal I would recommend to particularly strong stomachs.”—Michal Szczesniak, Zycie

From Germany:

**Selected as one of the best books of the year by the Literary Supplement to the Frankfurt Allgemeine Zeitung**

“Dorota Masłowska is said to be the young voice of Poland. . . . The novel is bristling with energy; it is exhausting and wound up, disgusting and funny, a bit like a bumper car ride between book covers.”—Suddeutsche Zeitung

“Fast and bold with color. . . . No established writer could have written this book because established writers lack what this writer has—the language. It is the language of adolescence and its slang. Fast, heavily abbreviated, full of color, bursting with idiosyncrasy. . . . Similarities are quickly drawn to the films Being John Malkovich and Trainspotting, but also to Kafka, Gombrowicz and Gaddis. . . . What distinguishes Masłowska from pop literature is her linguistically sovereign talent of mastering the confusion of adolescence and its criticism of society without sacrificing its coolness. The text oscillates deftly between the garrulous and the laconic, between elevation and truncation, lyrical statement and obscenity, between quotidian and sublime thought, humor and tragedy.”—Neue Zürcher Zeitung

“Dorota Masłowska sketches her portrait of society in the grotesque and off-key jargon of today’s subculture. . . . She consistently flouts the standards of literary language, and thus develops a new art of language, fascinating, astonishing, and sometimes fervid.”—Sendeplatz: DP-Kulturredaktion Word und Musik

“Not only does Maslowska make Irvine Welsh’s novels look like harmless idylls, the Polish writer proves to be stylistically adept beyond her young age. Her narrations are brief and precise, the images strong and striking.”—Falter (Buchbeilage)

“[A] stream of connotations. A reality without clear outlines, writing between hallucination and parody. . . . Obviously, in Masłowska’s text, language is more than the skin, it is the flesh. At the same time, though, this book is more arousing in the social political meaning.”—Die Welt

“Poetic force, dramatic imagery, and vulgar candidness . . . [The story] is told in such an inebriating tone that one gladly loses oneself with its crazy protagonist.”—Der Tagesspiegel

“In her grandiose debut novel the young Polish writer Dorota Masłowsa draws up the breathless portrayal of an outsider.”—Der Spiegel

“Masłowska has her protagonist rush through life full speed—literally. Filled up with drugs, societal and individual yearnings are blended in him to a true tour de force.”—Choices

“Magnificent, perfect, rebellious, dirty and poetic.”—Buch-Tipp, Teletext

“A fire is burning in Andrzej. Its cinder is longing. For love and a better life. Also, the disgust for the pallid and corrupt environment. It is the same pulse that drives Franz Biberkopf in Döblin’s Berlin Alexanderplatz and Holden Caulfield in The Catcher in the Rye.”—TAZ NRW

“Dorota Masłowska, whose debut has topped her country’s bestsellers lists for months, is the hope of Polish literature. . . . One is forced to conclude that it is completely unimportant how old or young an author is if she has written such a book and that Masłowska shows exceptional talent with regard to language.”—Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung

“At the very least, Dorota Masłowska’s novel is a caldera of firing guns, flexing feral words and rupturing its subject. . . . Confronted with so much power and intensity one cannot but surrender.”—Lifestyle

“Reality is diluted and the ‘I’ becomes the reader, ending in an apocalyptic delirium that leaves behind the linguistic lowlands of character portrayal – a horrific journey of escape from saturnine clarity. . . . This book is a godsend, a drug trip intoxicated with language and ideas. A cheaper high would be difficult to come by.”—2/2 (no publication title)

“A mélange of Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye, Burroughs’ Naked Lunch and Doblin’s Alexanderplatz. . . . The book is X-Rated, explicit to the point that it makes you nauseous.”—Buchreport

“Her language is dirty and rebellious with poetic aura.”—Bremes

“Dorota Masłowska writes a slick utopia of delirium. . . . This debut of young Dorota Maslowska is coolly extraordinary. . . . It is exceptional how she interweaves slang and literary language into an original poetry striding the two. . . . The book is an argument for socially relevant literature. Or perhaps it is definitive proof that unfavorable circumstances can spawn better books.”—Supplement to Buchmesse

“A novel like a rush of speed: hard, fast and breathtaking.”—Young Miss

“Stylistically and linguistically impressive . . . Poetic, disturbing, it will carry you away.”—Subway

“She leaves nothing to the imagination as she shows the breakdown of her hero.”—Woman

“Masłowska’s prose is a coup of linguistic freedom. She refuses to adhere to grammar or lexicon and creates her own voice, driven by intoxicated experiences, by sex and largely by drugs. Expressionist and extroverted, Masłowska quarries her oblique figure in the keyboard. . . . The book is rife with the attitude of a restive and unstable generation in search of meaning and values.”—Eselsohr

About the author:

DOROTA MASŁOWSKA is the recipient of the prestigious Polityka Prize. She is twenty-one years old and lives in Warsaw.

crédito da foto da autora: © Katarzyna Malinowska