Not only that, but Szasz possesses the skill to find the balance between a piece of dazzling experimental writing that is also completely readable in an addictive, page-turning way. We might even have a genius on our grubby hands. A major novel of perversity and pleasure from a richly exciting new literary talent. Apparently orphaned in a foreign land engulfed by civil war, Tamara finds herself in an isolated and notoriously mismanaged home for abandoned children.
Initially unable to comprehend the local language, she attempts to communicate nonverbally, having seemingly lost the faculty of speech.
A sinister cast of characters duly appears, including the glamorous but corrupt Director, her overbearingly sadistic partner the Doctor, not to mention the Father β a perverse cleric with a penchant for cruelty β amongst other unsavoury and remorseless individuals, all enforcing a strict hierarchy between the adults and the children and thus the perpetrators and the victims of institutionalised violence.
Conversely, these kaleidoscopic projections, delirious daydreams and compulsive diatribes gradually accumulate to articulate a traumatised inner topography that mirrors the devasted and desolate external landscape of a perpetual war zoneβ¦. They told me that my name is Tamara. The Director told me that my parents are dead. She told me that they were shot in the square.
In the city. There was a big shooting there. The people were all lined up in the square, and the soldiers who were standing up on the balconies or lying on the roofs of the buildings fired their guns. They shot everyone in the square. Nobody could escape because the army put tanks at either end of the square so nobody could run away. They all got shot. One day my parents will come and get me. The Director tells me not to worry. She says I am safe now.
