Vilmos Kondor 2008
(translated from the
Hungarian, Paul Olchváry, 2012) (February 2013)
An
interesting book in a noir-ish style and an exotic setting, but with some
contemporary feeling added. The plot concerns a young middle-class Jewish
woman, who turns up dead on the street, and an American-Hungarian reporter who
tracks down the nasty family and social circumstances around her death.
Although not personally involved in her story, he feels compelled to follow it
up and to an extent take a kind of vengeance, both for her and his troubles. There
is a range strong female characters with agency, though neither the female nor
the male characters are particularly attractive, and the male reporter is the
centre of the story. It builds slowly to some rather sharp violence, which is
probably in keeping with the style and theme of the story, and the setting of
pre-Nazi Hungary. The political scene is a backdrop, and well integrated into
the storyline, but not central to the plot. Although very gritty, it does give a
memorable picture of the life of the middle and lower classes in a
middle-European city in the 1930s.
