Eleven-Inch
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- $19.99
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- $19.99
Publisher Description
What does it take to succeed as a queer teenage Eastern European sex worker in the 1990s? Eleven inches and a ruthless attitude.
Western Europe, shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall: Two queer teens from Eastern Europe journey to Vienna, then Zurich, in search of a better life as sex workers. They couldn’t be more different from each other. Milan, aka Dianka, a dreamy, passive naïf from Slovakia, drifts haplessly from one abusive sugar daddy to the next, whereas Michał, a sanguine pleasure-seeker from Poland, quickly masters the selfishness and ruthlessness that allow him to succeed in the wild, capitalist West—all the while taking advantage of the physical endowment for which he is dubbed “Eleven-Inch.” By turns impoverished and flush with their earnings, the two traverse a precarious new world of hustler bars, public toilets, and nights spent sleeping in train stations and parks or in the opulent homes of their wealthy clients. With campy wit and sensuous humor, Michał Witkowski explores in Eleven-Inch the transition from Soviet-style communism to neoliberal capitalism in Europe through the experiences of the most marginalized: destitute queers.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Polish writer Witkowski (Lovetown) chronicles the travails of two teenage sex workers from Eastern Europe in this audacious tale. Dianka, a 16-year-old Slovakian who also goes by Milan, and Polish Michał, 17, who sports an "eleven-inch Schwanz," move from client to client and from Vienna to Munich to Zurich in the early 1990s, each date taking on the feel of "a game of roulette," as Michał muses. Michał is an unreliable narrator: "It's probably best to take everything I say with a grain of salt," he informs the reader after recounting his running away from home. Dianka, meanwhile, spends time with the muscly, tattoo-covered "The Rubbish Man" in Vienna, described by Michał as a "character in a gay comic book"; and an old man in Zurich who's interested in hosting both her and Michał. Michał catalogs his work in numbing detail, though he charms with his wit, which Martin captures excellently in his smooth translation ("It was his ego that needed stroking... he wanted someone to emotionally shine his shoes," he says about one of the johns). While some readers might find the episodic repetition tedious, this offers an electrifying dive into a memorable demimonde.
