One Minute Stories
Örkény István
„Supremely deft, witty and poignant, Örkény’s stories sparkle with the absurd and the inexplicable which he discovers gliding beneath the surface of the rituals, gossip, cafés and intrigues of contemporary Budapest. A newspaper misprint, an accident in the street, a funeral, even the instructions pinned to the wall beside a fire extinguisher become the occasion for a meditation on existence. Örkény is a master of irony and the art of survival practiced close to the stuff of ordinary experience.” Cathy Peake
Detective Story
Kertész Imre
Antonio Martens was a torturer for the secret police of a recently defunct dictatorship. Now in prison, he requests and is given writing materials in his cell, and what he has to recount is his involvement in the surveillance, torture, and assassination of Federigo and Enrique Salinas, a prominent father and son whose principled but passive opposition to the regime left them vulnerable to the secret police. Preying upon young Enrique’s aimless life, the secret police began to position him as a subversive and then targeted his father. Once this plan was set in motion, any means were justified to reach the regime’s chosen end – the destruction of an entire liberal class. Inside Martens’ mind, we inhabit the rationalizing world of evil and see first-hand the inherent danger of inertia during times of crisis.
The Enchantress of Florence
Salman Rushdie
“Trying to describe a Salman Rushdie novel is like trying to describe music to someone who has never heard it–you can fumble with a plot summary but you won’t be able to convey the wonder of his dazzling prose or the imaginative complexity of his vision. At its heart, The Enchantress of Florence is about the power of story-whether it is the imagined life of a Mughal queen, or the devastating secret held by a silver-tongued Florentine. Make no mistake, it is Rushdie who is the true „enchanter” of this story, conjuring readers into his gilded fairy tale from the very first sentence: „In the day’s last light the glowing lake below the palace-city looked like a sea of molten gold.” At once bawdy, gorgeous, gory, and hilarious, The Enchantress of Florence is a study in contradiction; highlighted in its barbarian philosopher-king who detests his bloodthirsty heritage even while he carries it out. Full of rich sentences running nearly the length of a page, Rushdie’s 10th novel blends fact and fable into a challenging but satisfying read.” Daphne Durham
Available at Libri bookstores in the following bigger shopping malls: Mammut, Árkád, Westend, Campona and Europark.