A courageous account of torture and insanity that beams with hope of a soul’s survival.
A shocking glimpse into the mind of a victim of psychological and physical torture at the hands of the Hungarian secret police under Stalinism.
Töttösy's first memoir, translated by Szablya, delves into his psyche under the extreme stress of torture, as well as his mental destabilization as a result of hallucinogenic drugs he ingested under duress in 1952 and ’53. During Stalin’s reign, the Hungarian secret police, the AVH, were utterly ruthless in extracting confessions from their political prisoners. Töttösy was a victim of their so-called truth serums, which, coupled with tactics such as repeatedly beating him with clubs, caused him to manifest symptoms of schizophrenia. A voice began speaking in his head, commanding him to tell the truth. Each time he spoke, he was beaten, often so brutally he welcomed the passage to unconsciousness as a brief respite from torture. Mysteriously, he managed to survive; despite the voice in his head forcing him to confess to a conspiracy, it seemed to repeatedly save his life by warning him against the dangers of his actions. Töttösy's resilience will stagger even the most stoic reader. As the memoir progresses and his insanity clashes with the absurdity of the punishments enacted by the secret police, his frenzied mind almost becomes a force of good against the evil madness of their actions. The fact that his memory remained so sharp in the grip of mental illness and abuse is miraculous. Szablya’s fluid translation carries the weight of historical importance, providing deep insights into the hidden brutality of the AVH. More information and research about the Hungarian regime may have strengthened the work’s readability to those unfamiliar with the surrounding history, but this unflinching portrayal of inhumanity will capture anyone’s attention.
A courageous account of torture and insanity that beams with hope of a soul’s survival.Pub Date: Aug. 10, 2012
ISBN: 978-1478168171
Page Count: 192
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: April 1, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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