Galejnice Extraliga

A gripping dystopian novel about a twisted prison system that is not so different from America's own.

Loretta Thurwar and Hamara Stacker, a.k.a. Staxxx, are stars of the Chain-Gang All-Stars, the cornerstone of the hugely popular and extremely controversial Criminal Action Penal Entertainment (CAPE) programme. It’s the return of the gladiators, and prisoners fight for the ultimate prize—their personal freedom.

As part of CAPE, prisoners, divided into chain-gangs, travel and fight each other to the death in front of packed stadiums, while morally conscious protestors demonstrate outside. Thurwar and Staxxx, teammates and lovers, are the crowd's favourite. And if all goes well, Thurwar has only a few fights left before she's free, a burden as heavy as her deadly hammer. She is slowly preparing to say goodbye to her comrades and considering how she could help them retain their humanity despite this so-called sport. But the corporate owners of CAPE will stop at nothing to maintain the status quo and the spectator appeal of the matches, and the further obstacles they place in Thurwar’s path have a devastating impact.

Like Orwell's 1984 or Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, Adjei-Brenyah's book presents a dystopian vision so unsettling and enlightening that it should permanently change our understanding of who we are and what we are capable of.
— The Washington Post

Adjei-Brenyah weaves a sci-fi world full of suffering and blood money, but also a world that is not entirely without hope. In doing so, he is not so much transforming the definition of the genre novel as creating his own genre. A new master of dystopian literature has appeared.
— Wired

One of the most interesting young American writers. His work is urgent, engaging, highly entertaining, formally daring, and politically rousing. Read one page—any page—and you will see what I mean.
— George Saunders