- Published: 07/04/2011
- ISBN: 9781846273643
- Granta Books
- 240 pages
Lovetown
Michal Witkowski
Translated by William Martin
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 gays, 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 gays – the clapped out queens and the flashy fags – as they meet in a place where anything goes, but some things have also been lost.
£8.99
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. Treat yourself; buy it
Neil Bartlett, Guardian
A fascinating look at how the darkness of communism may have only given way to a blander, cosmopolitan life for all and sundry
Big Issue
The end of Soviet oppression wasn't good news for everyone. Patricia and Lucretia are relics of the pre-Solidarity, pre-Aids Polish gay scene, nostalgic about the old days of shame and secrecy ... The two old queens - as much outsiders in the new world as in the old - tell their stories of samizdat sex to a young gay journalist
Kate Saunders, The Times
Michal Witkowski on Granta.com
Fiction | The Online Edition
Lovetown
Michal Witkowski
Discover Lovetown: a homo-haven in post-Communist Poland.