Author(s): Alan Duff

New Zealand Fiction

Alan Duff's latest and potentially most succesful effort. 'She screams one word: Szabad! Free. Again: Szabad!' It is the 1950s. The Russians and their secret police, the Avos, have a choking grip on Hungary and the lives of its citizens. Attila Szabo is one of them, just a teenager, but he's been forced to grow up quickly, with his father having spent the last two years locked away in prison. They live in a state-owned tenement: Attila, his parents and the older brother he once adored. In the top-floor flat, a new couple has just moved in, reassigned there by the government. They're clearly from a different class, so why have they been sent here and, more importantly, can they be trusted? But it's the wife who is of interest to Attila: she's the most beautiful woman he's ever seen, and his coming fight for his country's freedom is also to become one of passion.