Dorota Maslowska

Dorota Masłowska was born in Wejherowo, Poland in 1983. While preparing for her school-leaving examinations, she wrote her first novel »Wojna polsko-ruska pod flag bialoczerwon« (2002; Eng. »Snow White and Russian Red«, 2005) in less than a month. It became a bestseller and was translated into more than twenty languages. While some critics praised the début novel for its break with the facile conventions of the coming-of-age genre, the book met with withering criticism in other quarters. Masłowska fills the existential void within her essentially sensitive protagonist, the yobbish anti-hero Andrzej, whose pumped-up machismo takes on grotesquely comical forms, with grandiloquent imagery. After his break-up with his girlfriend, he drifts about in dismal, nameless small towns. Hallucinatory drugs amplify not only the aggressions acted out between people, but also fire nationalist hatred, which threatens to combust into a Polish-Russian war. Into the end-of-days mood that pervades her eclectic novelistic construct, Masłowska injects a metafictonal charge when she introduces a character that bears her name. Through this self-reflection, she proved to her critics that she was already well-versed in post-modern handiwork.After finishing school, Masłowska studied psychology and cultural studies in Lublin, Gdańsk and Warsaw. Her second novel »Paw Królowej« (2005; Eng: The Queen’s Peacock/Puke), a rap, reads like an alienated, syncopated ode to the burdens of early success and the egocentric hangers-on that populate the cultural milieu. Once again the author deconstructs notions of identity with verve and irony and introduces an alter ego that decisively influences the course of events. Both her first and second books were adapted for the stage and performed in Gdańsk, Szczecin, Warsaw, Kraków and Łódź. Her play »Dwoje biednych Rununów mówicych po polsku« (Eng. »A Couple of poor, Polish-speaking Romanians«, 2008) has been staged in Toulouse, Chicago, Sydney, Vienna, London and Berlin, among others. Masłowska set her latest novel »Kochanie, zabiłam nasze koty« (2012; Eng: Honey, I Killed Our Cats) in a phantasmagorical New York and created a background pastiche of press jargon, classical high literature and an intentionally absurd automatic translation from the English.She has received the Polityka Award (2002), German Prize for Youth Literature (2005) and Poland’s prestigious Nike literature prize (2006). Masłowska lives in Warsaw.

Schneeweiß und RussenrotKiepenheuer & WitschKöln, 2004[Ü: Olaf Kühl]Die ReiherköniginKiepenheuer & WitschKöln, 2007[Ü: Olaf Kühl]

Kochanie, zabiłam nasze kotyNoir sur BlancWarschau, 2012