Satantango

Description

In the darkening embers of a Communist utopia, life in a desolate Hungarian town has come to a virtual standstill. Flies buzz, spiders weave, water drips and animals root desultorily in the barnyard of a collective farm. But when the charismatic Irimias - long-thought dead - returns, the villagers fall under his spell. Irimias sets about swindling the villagers out of a fortune that might allow them to escape the emptiness and futility of their existence. He soon attains a messianic aura as he plays on the fears of the townsfolk and a series of increasingly brutal events unfold.

Laszlo Krasznahorkai was born in Gyula, Hungary, in 1954. He has written five novels and won numerous prizes, including the Best Translated Book Award in Fiction, twice, the International Booker Prize in 2015 for his oeuvre, and the 2019 National Book Award for his final novel, Baron Wenckheim's Homecoming.

A modern masterpiece that manages to speak both of its time and to transcend it altogether * Sunday Telegraph * A monster of a novel: compact, cleverly constructed, often exhilarating * Guardian *