Market Day

In May 1946, at the weekly market of a village in the Nagykunság region, a group of women hunts down and tortures to death a Jewish egg trader. The narrator, a teacher's wife, sees the murderous fury spread like wildfire, sparing neither women, the old nor children. Her memories of the bloody market day unfold side by side with the trial in Budapest that follows. The novel asks what drives people to band together and attack neighbours who had only recently survived deportation, and how anyone ends up among a lynch mob.

AI-generated summary

About the book

Form

Novel

Length

224 pages in the original

Genres

Historical, Crime (assigned by AI)

Set in

Hungary, 1946

First published

2016 by Magvető

Author's age

62 when first published

ISBN

9789631433869 (original)

9781803091600 (Seagull Books, United Kingdom)