Eye of the Monkey

Giselle, a history professor at the New University, has been followed by a young man for weeks. Close to a nervous breakdown, she goes to Dr. Mihály Kreutzer, a psychiatrist who is going through a divorce and has recently lost his mother.

The novel is a near-future dystopia. A devastating civil war has produced the United Regency, an autocracy in an unnamed European country. The population is split into segregated zones: the well-off live under mass surveillance, while the poor are confined to ghettos and treated as phantoms.

Doctor and patient soon begin a passionate affair. As Giselle starts to examine her family history and the possible source of her crisis, Kreutzer hides motives of his own. He has ties to some of the most powerful people in the country.

The narration is polyphonic, with stories nested inside stories. Women and men from different corners of this fractured society appear, each shaped by power and poverty. Twists and betrayals accumulate, and the book dwells on the society's darker and more perverse undersides. It is the first of the Hungarian writer's novels to appear in English.