White and Red

An acclaimed international bestseller from a young Polish literary sensation - a controversial and darkly comic novel of adolescence in which Trainspotting meets Naked Lunch. An audacious, fresh portrait of marginalized, fatalistic post-Communist youth. Andrzej 'Nails' Robakoski is a tracksuited slacker who spends most of his time searching for his next line of speed and dreaming up conspiracy theories about the national economy. Dumped by his girlfriend Magda, a beautiful seductress, he turns to Angela, a proselytizing vegetarian Goth, and then to Natasha, a hellcat who tears his house apart looking for speed, followed by Ala, the nerdy economics student who was the girlfriend of the friend who stole Magda. In the background, a xenophobic campaign against the growing Russian black market escalates, resulting in citizens painting their houses in national colours, and a pageant to crown one of the girls as Miss No Russkies... or did it all just happen in Nails' fevered mind? With inventive and visceral language that is by turns poetic, hilarious, disturbing and dirty, White and Red is a powerful portrait of love, hopelessness and political burnout in contemporary Eastern Europe.