Dorota Maslowska

When U.S. publishers give teenagers book deals, there’s usually some hard partying in the pages. Snow White follows that rule–to the consternation of book-loving Poland, which reluctantly nominated the then-nineteen-year-old Maslowska for the Nike Prize, its highest literary honor. Maslowska’s tale of addiction and self-destruction is so brutal it has been compared to Irvine Welsh’s Trainspotting. In post-Communist Eastern Europe, Andrzej “Nails” Robakoski bounces among women after his girlfriend gives him the boot. He’s even more confused by what’s happening to his country, which becomes comically corrupt as the Russian black market reorders all of society, or so it seems. But who knows Nails’s paranoia might have something to do with all those drugs he’s been taking.