Romania in the year of Chernobyl, 1986. An eleven-year-old witnesses officials from the secret police take his father away. Month by month, hope of seeing him again fades. He tries to support his brave mother, who is ostracized as a Jew and dissident, while keeping the bullying he faces at school a secret from her. He accompanies her to the comrade ambassador, from whom she hopes to receive help, and devises his own plans to free his father from the labor camp by the Danube Canal. An imprisoned father, a courageous mother, and the confrontation of a keenly aware boy with a repugnant dictatorship. György Dragomán is the outstanding talent of young Hungarian literature. This passionate, wild, tender novel, with its dense, powerful language, will endure for a long time. György Konrád.