A Tough Nut to Crack

In 1989, the Berlin Wall fell and the beleaguered states on the far side of the Iron Curtain turned their weary but hopeful gazes to the West. The transition from communism to democracy hit harder than expected, however. Hungarian novelist Krisztián Dombrádi offers a portrait of this era of change from the perspective of the average person on the street. What makes this novel particularly engaging is that it sets aside discussion of political theories and focuses instead on the ways in which people adapted to a flood of new expectations and new rules in a country suddenly thrown into the global free market. The new political and social structures that emerged in Central Europe in the early 1990s created dramatic conflicts of values across generations. Dombrádi sets aside the almost innumerable political theories concerning the pros and cons of this transition and instead crafts a depiction of the era against the backdrop of the social conflicts that emerged as people grappled with the difficulties of everyday life. (Thomas Cooper)

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