Dragomán's The White King in English

The narrator of The White King is an 11-12-year-old boy called Djata, whose father was imprisoned and taken to the Danube Canal for forced labour, as a punishment for signing a petition against the regime. The world of The White King resembles Romania in the 80s, which the author knows intimately, but is not identical to it.

The novel, or rather short-story novel, relates some episodes in the life of the son and the mother who were left behind. It is in a sense a Bildungsroman, but one in which education means a series of ”abuses, wounds, physical and mental injuries, moral mutilations – all the more horrible since this state of affairs seems to be accepted as normal by everyone, including our hero. The narrative voice seamlessly turns from the familiarity of an adolescent's world that we tend to regard as normal to inconceivable, horrifying abnormality and an apocalypse of blood and cruelty” (Ferenc Takács).

The White King was published in Hungarian in 2005 and became an immediate success. It is the second book by the author, born in 1973 in Tirgu Mures (Romania). His first novel, entitled The Book of Destruction (A pusztítás könyve, 2002) was a critical success and earned its author several prizes. Dragomán has lived in Budapest since 1988 and is married to poet Anna T. Szabó.

György Dragomán: The White King, Doubleday, 2008, translated by Paul Olchváry"

Source: Hungarian Literature Online