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January 08, 2008

THE WHITE KING

As TEV regulars know, we maintain a high level of interest in all matters Hungarian.  György Dragomán's novel The White King is just a few books down in our TBR pile, so we note with interest Tibor Fischer - who knows from things Hungarian - saying some pretty nice things in the Guardian, and never once invoking his uncle.

The chapters could almost all function as standalone short stories, and it's ironic, but not all that surprising, that one of the shrewdest analysts of the communist system experienced relatively little of it (knowledge and distance give a good perspective). Dragomán got his English-language deal after the chapter "Jump" appeared in the Paris Review. The "Pickaxe" chapter, in which the kids are press-ganged by two labourers into digging up a field for them, is a perfect blueprint for the establishment of a dictatorship, a mixture of fear, force, lies, division and sweeteners. "Valve", about a shooting competition, sums up the lunacy of Ceausescu's regime better than anything else I've read.

Posted by TEV at 10:13 AM in Worthy Titles |

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