Daria ha decidido irse de Polonia para hacer borrón y cuenta nueva. Tras una temporada en España, se traslada a la localidad sueca de Malmö, donde se apunta a una escuela de cómic, ansiosa por emprender una nueva vida. Pero allí le espera una pesadilla kafkiana de trámites administrativos, y para subsistir no le queda más remedio que aceptar un empleo de camarera con un sueldo de miseria y sin contrato. Mientras acumula horas de trabajo, cansancio y desamores, le va creciendo por dentro un imparable sentimiento de rebeldía ante la injusticia, y decide dar un puñetazo en la mesa y luchar por sus derechos y los de sus compañeros.

Bogdanska is heroic for writing, drawing, and releasing this modern-day working person's pastoral! ( )

This is a largely autobiographical graphic novel that Daria Bogdanska wrote about her first years after moving to Sweden from Poland. As a penniless immigrant she scraped by taking on dodgy waitress positions that paid under the counter. She quickly realised that her employers were exploiting all their staff, with increasingly harsher treatments the less waitresses were ethnically Swedish. Bogdanska organises an undercover exposé of toxic family ties and forced dependence, and she does so by involving the unions and the media.

This graphic novel felt very Swedish: agitating for social justice by working with welfare state institutions. It’s well done: the black-and white illustrations and the art style reinforce the themes nicely, and they also convey some of the flavour of living down and out in an immigrant-heavy quarter of a Swedish city, where lofty ideals of equality and social security for all may not always reach those most in need of them. ( )