One spring, in a small town in Eastern Hungary, the trees suddenly shed all their leaves. Is this some natural disaster, or the result of human negligence? A mysterious phenomenon elicits different reactions, according to people’s dispositions: some break down, others formulate conspiracy theories, while others seek scientific or mystical treatments.
Local high school language teacher János Koroknai sets out to investigate the mystery. His inquiry leads him on a meandering course from a local senior citizens’ home through classrooms and the homes of his friends, progressing step by step toward discovery: that of his own family secret, as well as the community’s workings and dysfunctions.
Dénes Krusovszky’s book describes fictional events, and despite – or because of – this, gives us a highly authentic portrait of the Covid pandemic’s global legacy of anxiety, deterioration and despondency. His novel is fit to match Houellebecq’s Anéantir or Karl Ove Knausgaard’s The Morning Star, and likewise The Leave Drop Mystery proposes no solution or answers to these concerns.
Despite its truck with current and general anxieties of our civilization, The Leave Drop Mystery is an entirely Hungarian take on these issues. It deals with problems of migration: both of young people abandoning prospectless small towns, and those intellectuals, teachers included, whose only hope to make a living is in another country, where at least their children would have a future. Local politics and their emulation of international tendencies are also discussed.
How does one act rationally in an irrational world? Is there even enough breathing room to make authentic choices? In his gripping and yet gently melancholic page-turner, Dénes Krusovszky deals with these questions and more.
How does one act rationally in an irrational world?
Product details
ISBN 978 963 14 4277 9
2023, paperback
512 pages, 5490 HUF
Magvető Rights 
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