Mihály SarusiBeyond the Gulag

In Beyond the Gulag, a mosaic-like novel emerges from a bundle of short writings. The book is a journey through time to the small towns, villages and farms of rural Hungary and to the times before the regime change. The short narratives are based on traditional sociographic discourse, but in a narrative, reportorial genre, with adomazing formal elements making it lighter and more literary. The characters are all playing for survival and many tempers and many clever patterns of behaviour are revealed, all this with Sarusi's storytelling élan and a sense of irony that is not at all nostalgic.

The book can be read more smoothly, one might say with insight by those who have lived through the times of thirty years ago. For younger people, however, it can convey the zeitgeist of the Kádár era.

Castle Street Workshop Books 11 - Veszprém