The Hangmanssquo;s House narrates the life and times of a Hungarian family in Romania during the 1970s and 80s. These were extraordinary times of oppression, poverty, and hopelessness, and the novel depicts everyday life under the brutal communist dictatorship of Nicolae Ceau??escu, the unnamed vsquo;one-eared hangmannsquo; in the novel. He is an omnipresent figure, appearing in portraits, in classrooms and schoolbooks, in the empty food stores, in TV programs, and in obligatory Party demonstrations. He also seems to invade the bodies and minds of the common people, who become cruel to one another during this cruel period of history, just like the dictator.
Our narrator is a teenage tsquo;Girlssquo; who observes life through tangled, almost interminable sentences, as she tried to understand why her family is falling apart, why her mother has three jobs, why her father becomes an alcoholic, and why her grandmother dreams of tsquo;Hungarian timesnsquo;udash;and most of all, why there is persecution all around. Brutal though the times are, the Girlssquo;s narration is far from a mere indictment. It is suffused with love, tenderness and irony. This novel is fundamentally a woman-squo;s book; it is written by a woman, with women playing the principal roles in holding together the resilient fabric of society.
Evocative of the celebrated wry humor that distinguishes the best of Hungarian literature, The Hangmanwsquo;s House is a tour de force that introduces a brilliant writer to the English-language readership.
