Overview

A doctor-patient love affair goes awry in this near-future dystopian novel, the first by the award winning Hungarian writer to be translated into English. ""Like peering into the abyss and finding your consciousness forever altered. You cannot escape this book, you already hear its thunder!"" -Elfriede Jelinek, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature A doctor-patient love affair goes awry in this near-future dystopian novel, the first by the award winning Hungarian writer to be translated into English. ""Like peering into the abyss and finding your consciousness forever altered. You cannot escape this book, you already hear its thunder!"" -Elfriede Jelinek, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature Eye of the Monkey begins in the wake of a devastating civil war that led to the formation of the United Regency, an autocracy in an unnamed European country. The ravages of war are sweeping, and the populace has been divided into segregated zones, where the well-off are under mass surveillance and the poor are phantom presences, confined and ghettoized. On the verge of a nervous breakdown after being followed by a young man for weeks, Giselle, a history professor at the New University, seeks the help of Dr. Mihaly Kreutzer, a psychiatrist who is navigating divorce and the recent death of his mother. They soon begin a torrid love affair, but everything is not what it seems. As Giselle begins to unpack her family history and the possible root of her psychological crisis, Dr. Kreutzer, who has ties to some of the most powerful people in the country, possesses ulterior motives of his own. In T th's deftly woven, polyphonic, and dystopian novel-full of twists, turns, and treachery-we plumb the depths of a fractured, disturbed, and isolated society, as well as the underbelly of social perversions such a society produces. In this intricate web, stories within stories reveal the complicated lives of women and men who struggle to negotiate the networks of power and poverty that have shaped their lives and their relationships to one another.

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9781644214954

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Reviews

""Reading Eye of the Monkey is like peering into the abyss and finding your consciousness forever altered. You cannot escape this book, you already hear its thunder!"" —Elfriede Jelinek, winner of the 2004 Nobel Prize in Literature ""A terrifying novel that reminds us how autocracy's brutality and stupidity destroy all that is good in life. Eye of the Monkey is unsparing, unforgettable. I read it with my heart in my throat."" —Merve Emre, contributing editor at The New Yorker

""Reading Eye of the Monkey is like peering into the abyss and finding your consciousness forever altered. You cannot escape this book, you already hear its thunder!"" —Elfriede Jelinek, winner of the 2004 Nobel Prize in Literature ""A terrifying novel that reminds us how autocracy's brutality and stupidity destroy all that is good in life. Eye of the Monkey is unsparing, unforgettable. I read it with my heart in my throat."" —Merve Emre, contributing editor at The New Yorker ""Krisztina Tóth is irredeemably a poet. This is revealed by every element of her latest novel. It lies in the nature of her attention, and as this attention seizes upon the world, she then, at one certain point in the world she wishes to portray, zeros in, heads down to the depths and — as if she could do nothing else — opens up this minor, seemingly insignificant detail, which then becomes an impetus for the entire work, illuminating it, as in Eye of the Monkey, tying together what she left behind with what she stands before. Krisztina Tóth is a magnificent artist; receive her as such."" —László Krasznahorkai ""Krisztina Tóth's remarkable novel Eye of the Monkey is the literature of humanity's inexorable end—not apocalyptic literature, that toy department of human fantasy, but something worse. These thoughtfully studied and sharply realized characters stumble through the wreckage of themselves and their own blighted lives—and every moment of love or light returns as injury, as wound. I read it in a day.” —Jesse Ball, author of The Repeat Room ""The reader holds in their hands a superb novel—a subjective, even a personal account—of our daily lives in an autocratic society; our daily tensions and despairs. At the same time, in Tóth’s novel, we encounter people who—at times with heroic effort—attempt to live a human life. What makes this book exciting is how we are rooting for them—and for ourselves—for this to work out."" —Béla Tarr, director of Palme d'Or-nominated film The Man from London (A londoni férfi) ""Tóth’s alluring English-language debut chronicles the affair between a patient and her psychiatrist in a dystopian near-future Europe. Citizens of the unnamed country are under constant surveillance by webcams and segregated by economic status. After Gizella, a married professor, is accosted by a young man claiming to be her son, she enters therapy with Dr. Mihály Kreutzer, to whom she insists she’s never been pregnant. . . . . The eerie story is buoyed by keen character work, as Tóth delves into the secrets people manage to keep even in a totalitarian state. Fans of tantalizing suspense and layered storytelling such as Ryeo-ryeong’s The Trunk will find much to enjoy."" —Publishers Weekly

Author Information

KRISZTINA T TH is one of the most popular and best known Hungarian authors. She studied sculpting and literature in Budapest and spent two years in Paris during her university years. The recipient of numerous awards, she is the author of many children's books, novels, and poetry collections. In 2015, her novel Aquarium was featured on the shortlist of the German Internationaler Literaturpreis. Her works have been translated into twenty languages, among them Arabic, Czech, English, Finnish, French, German, Polish, Spanish and Swedish. OTTILIE MULZET has translated over seventeen volumes of Hungarian poetry & prose, including works by Szilard Borbely, Laszl Krasznahorkai, Gabor Schein, Gy rgy Dragoman, Laszl F ldenyi, Krisztina T th, Edina Szvoren, and others. Her translation of Krasznahorkai's Baron Wenckheim's Homecoming was awarded the 2019 National Book Award in Translated Literature.

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