The San Francisco Chronicle on The White King
1st May 2008
The San Francisco Chronicle looks at The White King.
“In Hungarian writer György Dragomán’s harrowing novel “The White King,” set in a nameless place understood to be 1980s Romania, we see this distorted industry through the eyes of the 11-year-old narrator, Djata. Djata’s father has been carted off for forced labor for speaking out against the regime. His teachers subjugate instruction to obedience, threatening - and often delivering - violence for the slightest infraction. Coaches, state officials and even army colonels interfere in school sports competitions to ensure victory for the children of high-ranking Party members. Djata’s classmates are sometimes his allies, sometimes informers, and it does not take much for a dumb prank to become “sabotage against the state.” In a series of disparate episodes, the unifying strand is dread, magnified by Dragomán’s style of childlike, breathless run-ons and sentences that seem never to end.”
The full piece is here.