Collection of short stories by the other writer to elected to President in the former Eastern Bloc: in this case, Hungary.

One of the issues with reading literature from totalitarian states is that we are always reading beyond the text, searching for hidden meanings and covert criticism, that we ignore what is front of our eyes. This probably works in Goncz favour for many of the stories (i.e., 'Balance' or 'Power')in this collection are so run-of-the-mill, so predictable that they feel like a 100 stories we have read before. Perhaps it is the predictably that was the criticism of the regime - 'look even our stories are banal now'.

Add in the one-two page 'fables' which fail to excite, this collection stands on the strength of three stories - 'The Front', 'Old People', and Encounter.

'The Front' concerns an old lady living alone who is visited by two Russian soldiers; the younger one returning later to rape her. She fends him off and then feeds him - he is so like her soldier son - they come to a mutual understanding. This could be read as an allegory of Hungary (the old woman) or it could just be a story set in war that tells us we are all "God's children". Despite the cliched aspects of this story it has stuck in my mind.

'Old People' sounds like it could be a black comedy - a committee is awarding a plaque to a writer who has dementia, i.e., the great writer deprived of words and so cannot resist the award the state wants to give, and he doesn't want to receive. In reality, the story focuses on the writer's wife and her chores - cleaning him, making the house tidy, etc. There is a Chekhovian feel to this story - the despair, the suffering, etc - but it fails to move beyond the furniture to philosophy as happens in Chekhov.

The last, and longest, story in the collection is 'Encounter'. It is also the best story by far. In France, a bishop travelling to Rome to vote on the canonisation of Joan of Arc is left stranded when his car breaks down. The only place to seek refuge is a lonely farmhouse owned by a young woman. Soon we realise that the woman is Joan and the bishop, Cauchon, the magistrate who condemned her to burn centuries ago. Other characters from the past appear as the two protagnonists discuss aspects of the trial, religion, history. Goncz made his name as playwright and it shows here (it also has elements of Marai in it's construction) - characters sit and talk but this story transcends it's limitations in a manner the other stories fail to. It is the one time when reading this collection that there really is something beyond the text.

Hard to recommend fully but it is short, and Encounter is definitely worth reading. ( ( )