Nine is a brilliant novel from one of Europe's finest writers. It tells ofa post-communist generation of young Poles among whom the strictures ofthe old collide daily with the freedom of the new, adrift in moral spaceand disconnected from family, neighbours, and friends. It is the story ofPawel, a young businessman, in debt to loan sharks, seeking help fromformer
friends, many of whom are now prominent in the city's drug-dealingunderground. And of Warsaw, a hostile landscape of apartment blocks,factories, and suburban wastelands, 'a city that at nine-thirty goes toground, coming to a halt, and giving time to those who have nothing todo.' In prose that is at once colloquial and lyrical, Stasiuk portrays apeople in transition and a nation in the re-making. In the process, he hascreated an existential crime novel as well as a major work of art.