ABOUT
THE BOOK

Set in a sleepy village north of Budapest in 1968, this touching, unsettling novel paints a richly wrought portrait of life in Hungary under Communism through the story of one insightful nine-year-old boy. The narrator is the ninth child in a family distinguished by its size, poverty, faith, and abundance of physical and psychological disabilities. Humiliated and abused by other boys, plagued by difficulties learning and speaking, and estranged from his family, the narrator attempts to express his yearning for things he cannot have and only sometimes understands. His sense of confusion is only exacerbated by the strict, secretive, Catholic household his parents keep in the face of the Communist government. The dual forces of guilt and desire propel him toward a fateful, beautifully rendered realization.