Detective Story

Description

Nobel Laureate Imre Kertesz plunges us into a story of the worst kind, told by a man living outside morality. '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. His charge? Multiple counts of murder; the murder of those disappeared by the state. Bereft of authority, and unable to avoid the consequences of his actions any longer, Martens turns his story to his involvement in the assassination of the high-profile Salinas family, and with it peers into the murderous mechanics of a regime bent on achieving its ends - no matter the means.

Imre Kertesz was born in 1929 in Budapest. As a youth, he was imprisoned in Auschwitz and later in Buchenwald. He worked as a journalist and playwright before publishing Fateless, his first novel, in 1975. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2002. Imre Kertesz died in Budapest in March 2016

A dark, disturbing novel, from a writer with a profound understanding of a dictatorship's inner workings * The Times * A sophisticated and brilliant dissection of nihilistic power * Times Literary Supplement * A powerful and troubling new novella * Daily Mail * Genuinely haunting and lyrical... memorable and thought-provoking * New Statesman * A suspenceful, bleak comic parable * Observer *