Metropole by Ferenc Karinthy

Not sure how to whip up a bit more activity in this group… any suggestions?

Our next book, anyway, is Metropole by Ferenc Karinthy. It’s about a linguist flying to a conference in Helsinki who has landed in a strange city where he can’t understand a word anyone says. As one claustrophobic day follows another, he wonders why no one has found him yet, whether his wife has given him up for dead, and how he’ll get by in this society that looks so familiar, yet is so strange. In a vision of hell, unlike any previously imagined, Budai must learn to survive in a world where words and meaning are unconnected. This is a suspenseful and haunting Hungarian classic (according to Amazon, anyway).

I’m yet to start reading but please do feel free to share your thoughts – either here or in person; details of our real-life, real-person book club are on our Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/michelle.howells#!/event.php?eid=190396964339769. We’ll be meeting to talk about Metropole on May 29; so no plot-spoilers before then, please!