Seven Dirty Days

Spanning a century of European history and locales including Budapest, Berlin, Paris, and Moscow, Seven Dirty Days follows the fate of a mysterious photograph that reveals--in seven sordid chapters--shocking accounts of the treatment of women and the treatment of Jews. An acclaimed filmmaker's powerfully cinematic narrative, it also gives voice to women in control of their fates, and, throughout, gives us glimmers of hope for a better future. Seven Dirty Days is among the best Hungarian novels in many years. With relentless narrative force punctuated by an exhilarating comic touch, P?ter G?rdos weaves a story as absorbing, suspenseful, and inventive as it is sweeping in the century of Central and Eastern European history it covers; a story that takes the reader in stunningly credible detail from pre-World War I Budapest and Berlin to 1930s Moscow and Paris, post-World War II provincial Kazakhstan; and then back again to Budapest, first in the communist era and, finally, in the twenty-first century, where, on board an international express train en route to Munich, no less, things come full circle in a scene that comes within a hair's breadth of murder. This story of social conflict, political upheaval, oppressor/oppressed (e.g. man/woman, fascist/Jew), betrayal, and so much more is rendered with great sensitivity even amid its unsettling depictions of sexual depravity and sexual violence. Its transnational reckoning with a century of history is as powerful as any that has come out of Europe in recent years; the almost playful prose brings a story that in another writer's hands might simply be depressing fully to life. In particular, its effortless, ever-appropriate humor serves to take the hard edge off just enough to make one want to continue reading rather than cast the book aside in search of lighter fare. A satisfying musical motif also weaves its way in and out of much of the book, with references to everything from a moment of opera to various sorts of other classical music reminding us that such beauty can prevail over depravity. Moreover, in a rarity for a Hungarian novel, Seven Dirty Days is almost wholly free of those nation- and language-specific allusions thatespecially when populating a depressing story devoid of humorcan yield a sad, inward-looking tale. In the experience of the writer of this synopsisa longtime translator and the publisher of New Europe Books (nationally distributed in the US since 2012)novels of the other sort often reach, at best, a few thousand die-hard readers of "Eastern European" literature. Seven Dirty Days will be critically acclaimed and has singular potential for commercial success. As a follow-up to the author's previous novel in English, it will not disappoint.