The Dispossessed

In a tiny village in northeast Hungary, close to the Romanian border, a young unnamed boy warily observes day-to-day life and chronicles his family’s struggles to survive.

Like most of the villagers, his family is desperately poor, but their situation is worse than most—they are ostracized because of his father’s Jewish heritage and his mother’s connections to the Kulaks, who once owned land and supported the fascist Horthy regime before it was toppled by Communists.

With unflinching candor, the boy’s observations are related through a variety of narrative voices—crude diatribes from his alcoholic father, evocative and lyrical memories from his grandparents, and his own simple yet powerful prose.

Together, these accounts reveal not only the history of his family but that of Hungary itself, through the physical and psychological traumas of two World Wars and the country’s treatment of Jews across generations.

Drawing heavily on Szilárd Borbély’s own childhood memories, The Dispossessed is an extraordinarily realistic and deeply affecting novel. Raw and often brutal, yet touched with moments of hope, it stands as a powerful literary achievement.