Nine

About this book

Pawel a young businessman in debt to loan sharks wakes up one April morning in a sea of debris broken glass ripped upholstery and clothes spilling out of the wardrobe. He turns to two friends for help: Bolek a former coal miner now a drug dealer who lives in tasteless luxury; and Jacek an addict who is himself on the run through Warsaw a washed-out city a hostile landscape of apartment blocks railroad stations wild gardens factories and suburban wastelands. Here Andrzej Stasiuk portrays a generation of Poles freed from outdated ideologies but left feeling adrift and disconnected from family neighbors and friends. At once existential crime fiction and a work of art Nine establishes Strasiuk as a major voice in European literature.