Snow White and Russian Red

by Dorota Masłowska

Book Overview

"Nails" Robakoski is 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... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0802170013
• ISBN13: 9780802170019
• Release Date: February 2005
• Publisher: Grove Press, Black Cat
• Length: 304 Pages
• Weight: 1.00 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.5" x 8.4"

Customer Reviews

Bring On The Clowns

I read a sampling of Polish literature as an undergrad, a sampling that was kind of a like a shrink-wrapped Christmas gift basket: A centerpiece fruit of Czeslaw Milosz, a cheese cube of Wislawa Szymborska, a hard candy of Zbigniew Herbert. The professor (himself American) made no bones about the notion that he thought of we Americans as Romans at dinner importing exotic delicacies for consumption and political conversation. Being the carless (as in, non-car owning) wage-slave struggling through school that I was, I didn't relate to being the fat beneficiary of an empire, but did understand that English was coming into its own as a major international commercial tongue, and therefore these books were available. Jump cut to more recent years, a little more money in the pocket, travel behind me, internet blooming and the discovery of the dark wit of Irvine Welsh, and I began to see certain artists (aforementioned Welsh, plus William Gibson, Octavia Butler, to name a few), as celebrating the ability of the beleaguered masses to emerge from all the trash-heaps, acquire weird skills that are somehow worth money now, and be these sort of mutant successes. Thus, it is not in a `canon' of Polish literature that I consumed Snow White and Russian Red, when I came across it, but instead as a finely rendered, single malt Scotch, created by a 21 year old phenomenon, available to everyone in the world market. I think it's too simplistic to say that Maslowska's anti-hero Nails, the tirade-prone speed freak, is just `caught between worlds.' Instead, the author speaks for a young, cosmopolitan generation that knows that whether you call it `communism' or `capitalism', we are only animals struggling for resources. What we can do to pluck our share has become bizarre, as espoused by the character Magda, who has dumped Nails and can sell her beauty both locally and abroad, or in the direct and thieving Natasha, who will snatch valuable speed out of your house like a drug-hungry Viking. Jump cut back to Polish Lit: there are, I suppose, even in English, a few echoes of the grand voice in Maslowska's prose. All the characters are prone to tirades (even sort of sound like each other sometimes). Milosz is capable of some long poems, and writes a damn lot of them. The breadth of both their voices (albeit in translation), is like someone shouting into a valley, is notably different from the rat-a-tat sparky words from writers in the U.S. and U.K. It is closer to an older sounding literature-the fact that Milosz, a poet, can have such fame, is a bizarre sort of resurrection of the archaic, and a figure like, say, Robert Creeley, an American poet, doesn't have it in the common consciousness in the U.S. (Milosz may even be more well known in the U.S. than Creeley). But what strikes me the most here, is that she makes fun of the anti-corporate mindset. Where in the West, in what I'll lump together as "literary, surrealist and sci-fi literature" the sympathy alm

Travesty of teenage groups

In literal translation- the main hero's name is Strong. He represents a youngsters' group of so called in Poland "sportsuits-wearers" He takes drugs, tends to be involved in,or to start fights(verbal or physical) for no reason, has a strange view on women, leads a stupid life and has exaggerated problems,which he mostly creates by himself. I think that writing the whole plot in the book's description has no bigger sense,because it's not the plot that has the important meaning Strong (Nail)is obviously an idiot,but Maslowska (who was in fact 19 when she the book was edited!) gives him some some freaky features that his inner monologue turns into pitiful,funny and creepy piece of writing. Really admirable book but I doubt if the translation can be decent,as I read its original Polish version and this book's slang and specific tone seems to be hardly possible to translate. Anyhow,enjoy.

a new favorite

This novel is amazing, rich in thoughts with the perfect amount of incoherence. A book worth sticking through to the end, I definetly have a newfound respect for the authors of my generation. It is so fulfillingly bizarre that let's just say that I won't need to be trying speed anytime soon.