About the Author

Imre Kertesz, who was born in 1929 in Budapest. As a youth, he was imprisoned in Auschwitz and later in Buchenwald. He worked as a journalist and playwright before publishing Fatelessness, his first novel, in 1975. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2002.

Reviews

"The narrative is neat, lucid, written with admirable economy" -- Alan Massie Scotsman "Candid and as black as night... How these pages shimmer with irony and astute observation... This is an astonishing performance, as terrifying as Kafka and as plausible" -- Eileen Battersby Irish Times "A sophisticated and brilliant dissection of nihilistic power and its servants, as well as a poignant depiction of the plight of individuals caught up in the mechanism of a barbaric state" -- Joseph Farrell TLS

At the start of this subtle look at the price of the war on terror from Hungarian author Kertesz (Liquidation), Antonio Martens, a policeman in an unnamed Latin American country, awaits trial for multiple counts of murder after the regime that employed him was toppled. Martens tells how he was transferred from the criminal investigative branch of the police to the Corps, a security unit, where, unfettered by any meaningful restraints, he pursued the case of Federigo and Enrique Salinas, a father and son who operated the country's leading department store chain and were suspected of plotting treason. Kertesz, who won the 2002 Nobel Prize for Literature, charts Martens's incremental descent into barbarism to chilling effect. This relevant and timely political allegory will remind many of J.M. Coetzee's Waiting for the Barbarians. (Jan.) Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information.