A stylistic mélange, this volume is a collection of essays, short stories and a radio play — most of them only published in magazines previously — by one of Hungary’s greatest novelists of the 20th century.

There was a lot at stake at the time: keeping Hungary’s intellectual independence in a totalitarian regime during the time of the Soviet occupation. Logbook is a parable: in a fictitious county of Denmark occupied by a fictitious conquerer, two ancient sea captains keep a logbook to preserve the banned culture of their homeland through a metalanguage of their own creation. The reality of the time is shown in another short story, The Other Hungary: these are the first moments of peace after the last weapons of World War II. were fired and after the first nuclear bombs were dropped. After the occupying Nazi troops were finally chased away and before the occupying Soviet troops would settle in there was a short moment of truce when writers, painters and musicians were composing an action plan demanding that official policies integrate the values of the Hungarian intelligentsia.