by David Szalay
First published 2025
István arrives as a teenager in a Hungarian apartment complex with his mother. The shy boy struggles to connect with classmates in this unfamiliar town. His isolation deepens when catastrophic events abruptly sever his childhood. In the years ahead, István drifts through life supported by the kindness or calculations of strangers. His path moves upward yet carries him far from the boy he once was. The adult István remains disconnected from himself and others, playing roles that feel foreign to him. Past trauma casts shadows over his present while modern life offers little comfort. He wrestles with circumstances largely beyond his control. The distance between István and everything around him grows until another sudden tragedy threatens to upend his existence once more. Szalay captures decades of intimate moments that reveal how unresolved wounds shape a life across the changing landscape of contemporary Europe.
Genres: literary-fiction, contemporary, family-drama
Vibes: emotional, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: fish-out-of-water, unreliable-narrator
Setting: Europe, Hungary
Period: 20th-century, 21st-century
351 pages · Hardcover · Jonathan Cape
Content warnings: depression, mental-illness