My Life Without Colour Orange

My Life Without Colour Orange is a coming-of-age tale of self-discovery, decadence, and redemption. Lena was born in a corner of Yugoslavia, which became Croatia. Lena’s childhood is amusingly and endearingly related in the early chapters. We learn of the misadventure that befell the alcoholic priest’s goat, Lena's long-distance running experiment that ended in disaster, the recovery from a near-death experience and her unmasking of the adulterous teacher. We discover the Chief Constable’s taste in porn videos and Lena reveals her sexuality with her first boyfriend to the music of Slayer. Following her arrival in London at nineteen, things move up a gear. Her first job in a college canteen may have lasted only a day, but she still found time to seduce the manager. Ironically, things start to improve when she begins working in a rat-infested hostel. One day, the immigration officials raided the hotel and most of Lena's colleagues were arrested. Desperate, she ends up working as a maid in a brothel, an introduction to London’s seedy sexual underbelly that she never completely escapes.