Imre Kert?sz's savagely lyrical and suspenseful new novel traces the continuing echoes the Holocaust and communism in the consciousness of contemporary Eastern Europe.

Ten years after the fall of communism, a writer named B. commits suicide, devastating his circle and deeply puzzling his friend Kingsbitter. For among B.'s effects, Kingsbitter finds a play that eerily predicts events after his death. Why did B.-who was born at Auschwitz and miraculously survived-take his life? As Kingsbitter searches for the answer -and for the novel he is convinced lies hidden among his friend's...

Tagebuchroman nennt Imre Kertsz seine Sammlung von Beobachtungen, Aphorismen und philosophischen Exkursionen aus dreiig Jahren. Im inneren Dialog mit Nietzsche, Freud, Camus, Adorno, mit Musil, Beckett, Kafka und anderen versucht er, Holocaust und Modernitt, Totalitarismus und Freiheit zu Ende zu denken.

`A fine and powerful piece of work... Dark, at times cryptic, and hugely energetic' Irish Times "No!" It is how a middle-aged Hungarian-Jewish writer answers an acquaintance who asks him if he has a child, and it is how he answered his wife years earlier when she told him that she wanted one.

`A sophisticated and brilliant dissection of nihilistic power' Times Literary Supplement From his prison cell, Antonio Martens, an interrogator for the recently fallen dictatorship, awaits execution.