“How To Get Into The Twin Palms movingly portrays a protagonist intent on both creating and destroying herself, on burning brightly even as she goes up in smoke.”
– The New York Times Book Review
Zosia is an unemployed 25 year old Polish immigrant living in Los Angeles, drifting through days spent eating junk food, lounging by a motel pool and driving around aimlessly, soaking up the sun and the scenery. Not quite American but no longer quite Polish, she feels lost between worlds, but can’t bring herself to quite care about her own fate. A random scheme to penetrate a Russian nightclub leads her to adopt a new identity: she’ll be Anya, a Russian girl, for now, and see if life looks different through the lens of a new identity. Richly atmospheric, funny and dark, Waclawiak’s debut illuminates a weird, grubby corner of sun-soaked L.A. and introduces a quirky, perceptive new voice.
You can purchase this book directly from Two Dollar Radio.
Karolina Waclawiak is an editor at The Believer. She lives in Los Angeles.
"My dark hair makes my eyes more cat-like and brighter in hue. More Eastern European. Less American. I am starting to make sense to them. I am taking off all my American skin. Killing my ability to pass for the Middle American and quiet and from here. Instead I am from the bloki again. Soviet-built and dooming."
-Karolina Waclawiak, How To Get Into the Twin Palms
