Be Faithful Unto Death

Written by Hungary's greatest modern novelist, Be Faithful Unto Death is the moving story of a bright and sensitive schoolboy growing up in an old, established boarding school in the city of Debrecen in eastern Hungary. Misi, a dreamer and would-be writer, is falsely accused of stealing a winning lottery ticket. The torments brought on by this incident which he is forced to undergo, and from which he grows, are superbly described, as Stephen Vizinczey's new translation unleashes the full power of Móricz's prose. First published in 1921, the novel is brimming with vivid detail from the provincial life that Móricz knew so well, and shot through with a sense of the tragic fate of a newly truncated Hungary. But ultimately it is the universal quality of the experience captured here, and the author's uncanny ability to rediscover for the reader precisely what it feels like to be that child, which makes this portrait of the artist as a young boy not merely a Hungarian, but an international classic.