Liquidation

Nine years ago, B. killed himself with a heroin overdose, leaving behind manuscripts, including a play that exactly reproduced the scene of his friends' learning that the Hungarian state-supported publisher for which they work is to be liquidated. That event actually occurred after B.'s suicide, which also figures in the play, and this novel's narrator, who calls himself what he is called in the play, Kingbitter, reacted to B.'s demise as the play, which he hadn't yet seen, records him doing. Furthermore, the play foretold some of the other friends' destinies. The characters of 2002 Nobel laureate Kertesz's brief new novel represent a generation of middle-European intellectuals so alienated by history--Auschwitz and what it symbolizes, to be specific (B. was born in Auschwitz)--that, as Kingbitter observes more than once, for them the "Hamlet question" has become "Am I or am I not?" Non-European readers could be forgiven for failing to sympathize with them enough to enjoy the novel much.