“A dark, disturbing novel, from a writer with a profound understanding of a dictatorship’s inner workings” — The Times
“A sophisticated and brilliant dissection of nihilistic power and its servants” — Times Literary Supplement
Antonio Martens is a torturer for the secret police of a recently defunct dictatorship. Now imprisoned, he begins to recount his involvement in the surveillance, torture and assassination of Federigo and Enrique Salinas, a prominent father and son whose principled but passive opposition to the regime left them vulnerable to the secret police. Preying upon the young boy’s aimless life, the secret police began to position him as a subversive element, before they turned their attentions to his father. Once the plan was set into motion, any means were justified to reach the regime’s chosen end…
Imre Kertész (1929 – 2016) was a Hungarian author and recipient of the 2002 Nobel Prize in Literature, “for writing that upholds the fragile experience of the individual against the barbaric arbitrariness of history”. He was the first Hungarian to win the Nobel Prize in Literature. His works deal with themes of the Holocaust (he was a survivor of German concentration and death camps), dictatorship, and personal freedom.
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