An NU Press Title
4/10/2009
Northwestern
5.5 x 8.5, 176 pp.
Trade Paper
ISBN 0-8101-2602-8 / $16.95
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Ninth, The
A Novel
Ferenc Barnas
Set in a sleepy village north of Budapest in 1968, this touching, unsettling novel paints a richly wrought portrait of mid-twentieth-century Hungary. The narrator is the ninth child of a family distinguished by its size, poverty, faith, and abundance of physical and psychological disabilities. His confusion is exacerbated by the strict, secretive Catholic household his parents keep in the face of a Communist system. These dual oppressions propel him toward an inevitable realization of his guilt and desire that speaks to his struggle with a fateful, seamless beauty.
"The Ninth is a masterpiece...It is an elegant book and a ruthless one." --Peter Esterhazy
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