Banana grove

The story begins on the eve of the regime change, when two employees of the internal countermeasures are sent to the conspiratorial apartment codenamed "Banánliget" to keep an eye on an apartment in the building opposite, where an inveterate poster and samizdat maker lives, twenty-four hours a day. Of course, Tamas Piricske and Pál Téli, the two agents, are forgotten in the confusion of the regime change - they, however, continue their work as ordered and do not leave the conspiratorial apartment for years. A real Béla Fehér absurdity unfolds from the basic situation: first the observed target moves away, then documentary filmmaker Kata Várkonyi learns about the Piricske-Téli duo who continue to produce reports in the Banánliget, scouts and calls out the forgotten evacuees here, then the neighbors; the extensive covert connections, the other eye and ear witnesses. And although wandering here and there, as memory stacks pieces of pottery, Béla Fehér's lamentably grotesque story, written with linguistic genius, comes together in the grand orchestral tutti at the end of the novel - in which the Hungarian and Eastern European '90s shine brighter than the sun absurd world.