Satantango

At long last, twenty-five years after the Hungarian genius László Krasznahorkai burst onto the scene with his first novel, Satantango dances into English in a beautiful translation by George Szirtes.Already famous as the inspiration for the filmmaker Béla Tarr€™s six-hour masterpiece, Satantango is proof, as the spellbinding, bleak, and hauntingly beautiful book has it, that €œthe devil has all the good times.€ The story of Satantango, spread over a couple of days of endless rain, focuses on the dozen remaining inhabitants of an unnamed isolated hamlet: failures stuck in the middle of nowhere. Schemes, crimes, infidelities, hopes of escape, and above all trust and its constant betrayal are Krasznahorkai€™s meat. €œAt the center of Satantango,€ George Szirtes has said, €œis the eponymous drunken dance, referred to here sometimes as a tango and sometimes as a csardas. It takes