'A sophisticated and brilliant dissection of nihilistic power' Times Literary Supplement

From his prison cell, Antonio Martens, an interrogator for the recently fallen dictatorship, awaits execution. His charge? Multiple counts of murder; the murder of those disappeared by the state. Bereft of authority, and unable to avoid the consequences of his actions any longer, Martens turns his story to his involvement in the assassination of the high-profile Salinas family, and with it peers into the murderous mechanics of a regime bent on achieving its ends - no matter the means.

Imre Kertész was born in 1929 in Budapest. As a youth, he was imprisoned in Auschwitz and later in Buchenwald. He worked as a journalist and playwright before publishing Fateless, his first novel, in 1975. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2002. Imre Kertész died in Budapest in March 2016

'A dark, disturbing novel, from a writer with a profound understanding of a dictatorship's inner workings' The Times

'Powerful and troubling' Daily Mail

Antonio Martens is a torturer for the secret police of a recently defunct South American dictatorship. Now imprisoned, he begins to recount his involvement in the surveillance, torture and assassination of Federigo and Enrique Salinas, a prominent father and son whose principled but passive opposition to the regime left them vulnerable to the secret police. Preying upon the young boy's aimless life, the secret police began to position him as a subversive element, before they turned their attentions to his father. Once the plan was set into motion, any means were justified to reach the regime's chosen end...

'A sophisticated and brilliant dissection of nihilistic power and its servants' Times Literary Supplement