Detective Story - (Vintage International) by Imre Kertész (Paperback)

About the Book

Originally published as Detektaivteortaenet, Magvetio, Budapest in 1977.

Book Synopsis

From Nobel Laureate Imre Kertész comes this riveting novel about a torturer for the secret police of a Latin American regime who tells the haunting story of the father and son he ensnared and destroyed.

Now in prison, Antonio Martens is a torturer for a recently defunct dictatorship. He requests and is given writing materials in his cell, using them to narrate his involvement in the torture and assassination of a wealthy and prominent man and his son whose principled but passive opposition to the regime left them vulnerable to the secret police. Inside Martens's mind, we inhabit the rationalizing world of evil and see firsthand the inherent danger of inertia during times of crisis. A slim, explosive novel of justice railroaded by malevolence, Detective Story is a warning cry for our time.

Review Quotes

"Appealingly meditative. . . . A compelling story, with a clever twist. . . . Kertész writes with characteristic lucidity, grace, and grim-gay humor." --The Philadelphia Inquirer "A sophisticated and brilliant dissection of nihilistic power and its servants." --Times Literary Supplement (London) "A timeless, placeless parable. . . . A chilling procedural of moral degradation." --New York Magazine"Hopefulness in the face of tragedy makes Kertesz a joy to read, even when he describes our darkest horrors." --The Believer"Kertesz spins a deeply self-conscious web of psychological drama." --The New York Sun

About the Author

Imre Kertesz, who was born in 1929 and imprisoned in Auschwitz and Buchenwald as a youth, worked as a journalist and playwright before publishing Fatelessness, his first novel, in 1975. He is the author of Looking for a Clue, The British Flag, Kaddish for an Unborn Child, Liquidation, and Gallery-Diary 1961-1991. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2002. He lives in Budapest and Berlin.