William Leith10 April 2012
An Exclusive Love
by Johanna Adorjan
(Vintage, £7.99)
"On 13 October 1991," the author tells us, "my grandparents killed themselves." That got my attention. The two old people, István and Vera, were Hungarian. István had survived Mauthausen, the concentration camp; Vera had thought she would never see him again.
After that war, István, a doctor, served as a surgeon in the Korean war, on the North Korean side. Then the Russians invaded Budapest, where they lived. So they fled to Denmark.
Years later, when István became ill, they lay down next to each other, in bed, held hands, and swallowed poison. Very intense; very moving.
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