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Set in the 1970s and ‿80s, The Hangman‿s House narrates the life and times of a Hungarian family in Romania. Those were extraordinary times of oppression, poverty and hopelessness, and Andrea Tompa‿s latest novel depicts everyday life under the brutal communist dictatorship of Nicolae CeauÈ¿escu, referred to by the narrator as an unnamed “one-eared hangman.â€? CeauÈ¿escu is omnipresent throughout the story‿in portraits in classrooms and schoolbooks, in the empty food stores, in TV programs, in obligatory Party demonstrations. Most insidiously, he is present in the dreams and nightmares of common people, who, in this cruel period of history, become cruel to one another, just like the dictator.   Our narrator, a teenage “Girl,â€? observes life through tangled, almost interminable sentences, trying to understand and process the many questions in her life: why her family is falling apart; why her mother has three jobs; why her father becomes an alcoholic; why her grandmother dreams of “Hungarian timesâ€?; and, most troubling, why there is persecution all around. Brutal though the times are, Girl‿s narration is far from a mere indictment. It is suffused with love, tenderness and irony.   Written by a woman and featuring a young woman narrator, The Hangman's House focuses intently on how women play the principal roles in holding together the resilient fabric of society. Evocative of the celebrated wry humor that distinguishes the best of Hungarian literature, Tompa‿s novel is a tour de force that will introduce a brilliant writer to English-language readers.

Marked by powerful and evocative prose, Ferenc Barnás‿s novel tells the fascinating story of a young man‿s journey through his strange obsessions towards possible recovery. The unnamed narrator is the parasite, feeding off others‿ ailments, but he is also a host who attracts people with the most peculiar manias. He confesses, almost amiably, his decadent attraction as a young adolescent to illnesses and hospitals. The real descent into his private, hallucinatory hell begins after his first sexual encounter; he becomes a compulsive masturbator, and then a compulsive fornicator. But to his horror, he realizes that casual sex is not casual at all for him‿each one-night stand results in insane jealousy: he imagines previous lovers hovering over him every time he makes love to a woman.   When he gets to know a woman referred to as L., he thinks his demons may have finally subsided. But when he hears of her past, the jealousy returns. He seeks relief through writing‿by weaving an imagined tale of L.‿s amorous adventures. What will he do with this strange manuscript, and can it bring him healing? A breathtaking blend of Dostoevskian visions, episodes of madness, and intellectual fervor, all delivered in precise, lucid prose, The Parasite is a novel that one cannot escape. Â

"A posthumously published Hungarian masterpiece that reflects on fragmented lives."--