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Home > Translation > The World Bookshelf > Books > Lovetown

Lovetown

Growing up queer in a Communist state, queens Patricia and Lucretia spent the ’70s and ’80s underground, finding glamour in the squalor, strutting their stuff in parks and public toilets, seducing hard Soviet soldiers, preying on drunks and seeing their friends die of Aids. Today they’re about to hit Lovetown, a homo-haven, populated by a younger generation of emancipated gay people, who are out and proud in their post-Communist paradise: suntanned, sculpted and vigorously spending the pink euro. This is the story of the clash between old and new gay people – the ‘clapped out queens’ and the ‘flashy fags’ – as they meet in a place where anything goes, but some things have also been lost.

This is one of the first novels published in Poland that portrays what it was like to be ‘different’ and gay in a communist state. Lovetown received great critical acclaim upon publication in Poland and has won many literary prizes.

‘This hilarious, scabrous, sharp-eyed, sharp-tongued (and brilliantly translated) novel is essentially and life-enhancingly political – if by politics we mean who gets to live, and how.’
Guardian

Author

Michal Witkowski

Michal Witkowski

Books

Lovetown

Michał Witkowski (born 1975) is well established as a novelist in Poland, known for his unabashed descriptions of the Polish gay underground, which broke barriers in a country still emerging from the repression of the communist past. His first novel Lubiewo remains his most successful, and has been published in many languages including English (as Lovetown, Portobello Books, 2010). Before The Lumberjack he published a set of short stories, and two other novels, Margot andBarbara Radziwiłłówna, though these have not appeared in English. The Lumberjack has been very well received in Poland and became a bestseller.

In December 2011 Witkowski came third in a list of Poland’s top ten best novelists under the age of 40 issued by the leading daily Gazeta Wyborcza. Witkowski has often appeared on Polish television, and is quite a controversial figure in Poland. He is also very popular, and has had great success with stage versions (monologues) of his novel Barbara Radziwiłłówna, as well as with his own audio recordings of his other novels. He lives in Warsaw.

Translator

Bill Martin

Bill Martin

Books

Lovetown

Bill Martin (b. Rochester, New York, 1976) published translations (from Polish and German) include Natasza Goerke’s Farewells to Plasma (Twisted Spoon, 2002), selected essays in The Günter Grass Reader (Harcourt, 2004), Erich Kästner’s Emil and the Detectives (Overlook Press, 2007).

Published by

Portobello Books, 2009
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Growing up queer in a Communist state, queens Patricia and Lucretia spent the ’70s and ’80s underground, finding glamour in the squalor, strutting their stuff in parks and public toilets, seducing hard Soviet soldiers, preying on drunks and seeing their friends die of Aids. Today they’re about to hit Lovetown, a homo-haven, populated by a younger generation of emancipated gay people, who are out and proud in their post-Communist paradise: suntanned, sculpted and vigorously spending the pink euro. This is the story of the clash between old and new gay people – the ‘clapped out queens’ and the ‘flashy fags’ – as they meet in a place where anything goes, but some things have also been lost.

This is one of the first novels published in Poland that portrays what it was like to be ‘different’ and gay in a communist state. Lovetown received great critical acclaim upon publication in Poland and has won many literary prizes.

‘This hilarious, scabrous, sharp-eyed, sharp-tongued (and brilliantly translated) novel is essentially and life-enhancingly political – if by politics we mean who gets to live, and how.’
Guardian

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