Where are you when you're so low that you can't get any lower? Hungarians know exactly where you are: you're "under the frog's arse" - a suitable epithet for Tibor Fischer's black comedy about life in Hungary under the Soviets between 1944 and 1956.
With such hefty subject matter, you might expect a heavy slog but I found myself book-in-hand as I waited for the metro, as I got off a tram, as I rode a turbulent bus to Budaörs. Reading it in Budapest was like watching a play from the centre of the stage. After ten days, I put it down, having been educated, touched and thoroughly amused.
Gyuri, son of a bourgeois family, confined by the Soviets’ capsized social order, does all that he can to avoid joining the army: namely, being good enough at basketball to be employable. Tales of the naked travels of the transport workers’ team fit in well with my own experience of Hungarian humour.
Above all, Fischer finds plenty of time to talk about life. Growing up is still growing up, even if it means more crouching in cellars and police cells. Parents are still parents, even if they’ve lost the will to participate in society. On a personal level, problems are much the same, occupation or no occupation: “1950 was a good year, I almost slept with four women.”
Under The Frog is irrepressibly funny. This doesn’t undermine the significance or the devastation of the events that took place. Moreover, it puts them into the proper perspective. Too often, vast swathes of history are swallowed up in a cloud of misery, which distances us from the people and their lives. Here, the triumphs and tragedies are real, human and all the more poignant.
