Eleven-Inch

‘[V]iolence, passion, orgasm merge into something refreshing and new. There is life breathed into every page, for which the credit also goes to the translator. The very structure of the novel exudes the unjust, unpleasantness and the unfairness of life. Its descriptive, explicit and brutal passages mock our expectation of poetic justice in our lives that never comes through. [. . .] There is no morality or lesson he is trying to inculcate through his novels. For the author, his task, at hand, lies in the careful unmasking of what it is to be a human being with all the imperfections at play. ’—Outlook. Read the full review here.

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 humour, 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. 

‘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). . . . [A]n electrifying dive into a memorable demimonde.’—Publishers Weekly

‘Eleven-Inch is ultimately about more than the dame aux camelias world of teenage gay prostitution. It's also a scathing portrait of the West's obsession with beauty, money, and the baubles--bling and boys--that money can buy. [. . .] Witkowski's novel is a king-size achievement in its own right.’—Philip Gambone, The Gay & Lesbian Review

Praise for the Polish original:
‘A story that sparkles and shimmers with the glitz of a collapsing culture, but also draws you down to the sticky metro stations, shady bars, or empty sad streets, the lifelessness of which is emphasized only by shop windows shining with a wall of Rolexes or cigars.’—Szymon Kloska

Praise for Lovetown:
‘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.’—Guardian

Praise for Lovetown:
‘A boisterous journey through communist and post-communist Poland. It’s a riotous, anarchic, self-proclaimed “faggot Decameron”—a cacophony of voices that proudly recount their queer exploits in toilets, parks and army barracks before homosexuality was decriminalised. . . . This is also a project of literary reclamation. In everything from his smutty language to his chaotic narrative structure to the lurid detail with which he describes death, sex and shit, Witkowski is challenging inherited notions not only of what it means to be queer but of how a writer should write, and even what it means to tell a story. The outcome is jubilant, subversive and hilarious.’—Observer

Buy the Ebook at a Discount: