Under the Frog: A Black Comedy

by Tibor Fischer

Book Overview

The Hungarians have an expression for the worst place in the world to be: "Under the frog's ass down a coal mine."

Under the Frog, Tibor Fischer's brilliant recreation of postwar Eastern Europe, was the surprise literary success of London, where it won the Betty Trask Award and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. It is the very witty and very sad account of two young men who survive the chaos of communism as part of a traveling basketball...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1565841492
• ISBN13: 9781565841499
• Release Date: May 1995
• Publisher: New Press
• Length: 256 Pages
• Weight: 0.70 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.3" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

Sorry for the cliche, but you'll laugh & you'll cry...

I don't remember how I came across this book in the first place, but by the second page I was laughing out loud, read the whole thing in one sitting and immediately went back to the beginning and started reading again. Why's it so good?First of all, it's packed with Fischer's unique sense of humor. Read the first couple sample pages; if you're not laughing, you probably won't enjoy the rest of the book. The humor is black, definitely. But there's a good chance you'll be laughing HARD nonetheless. Pranks, absurd situations, physical comedy, and wicked wordplay rule the roost.Second of all, it's dead serious. The book is about communism and the attempted revolution in Hungary in 1956. If you want to see the absurdity and insanity of the communist system as it looked from the inside at that time, Fischer delivers. It is fascinating, shocking, and it would be unbelievable if the author didn't make it so very believable.I haven't seen anyone mention it, but Under the Frog reads a lot like Kurt Vonnegut's best work (Slaughterhouse V or Cat's Cradle). For me, though, Fischer's book has a lot more reread value -- neither the humor nor the horror has grown thin over the many times I've read it. Highest recommendation.

A brilliant, haunting, truly memorable book.

Under the Frog is a novel about the oppression and evils of totalitarianism.The book tracks the exploits of Pataki and Gyuri, members of Hungary's elite National Basketball team from the end of WW II to and through the Hungarian Uprising against the Soviet Union in the mid 1950's.Ostensibly railway workers, the team travels the country, usually buck naked, in a specially constructed rail car, playing basketball, chasing girls and generally avoiding anything that looks like work while desperately striving to maintain their team membership, the only thing that keeps them from experiencing first hand the blight and depression that marks the plight of the common man in post war Hungary. Biting, satirical, often hysterically funny, the book nevertheless searingly conveys the sense of deprivation and repression that gave rise to the uprising as well as the brutality and viciousness with which it was put down.Fischer's international reputation was built on this novel, and deservedly so. It was one of the great novels of the Cold War era.A brilliant, haunting, truly memorable book.

Certainly not under powered

From the dark days at the end of World War Two, through to perhaps even darker days at the time of the Soviet suppression of the Hungarian uprising. Under The Frog is a deeply moving whilst seriously funny book. Seen mainly through the eyes of a basketball playing, perenial under achiever. Under The Frog effectively shows how laughter can rise out of tradegy, and tradegy out of absurbity. Under the frog for me remains one the bitterst denouciations of a totalitarian regime and the evils that it can generate. All that the hero wishes for is freedom. Better a street sweeper in Stockholm than a general in Hungary. This is Fischer's first book and acts as an excellent introduction into the unique prose style. I would heartily recommend the equal excellent 'Thought Gang' and 'Don't buy this if your stupid'

Basketball and Revolution

A brilliant debut novel which, to coin a cliche, will make you laugh hysterically before making yoiu weep uncontrollably. Set in 1950's Hungary, it is the story of a young member a works basketball team and his search for love, sex and work avoidance. The joy and optimism of the peaceful anti-Soviet uprising is supplanted by the sadness of repression. A wonderful book you will read in a single sitting.

Stunning debut!

One of the most stunning debuts ever, I think. For the last three years, I must have read this book at least three or four times - every year! It has black humour; a painfully accurate portrayal of adolescence's overwhelming urges, i.e. sex; and scalpel sharp observations about the essential absurdity that was life in a Soviet satellite at the height of the Stalinist era. The (picaresque?)Gyuri, the devil-may-care Pataki, the once debonair Elek, the urbane Jesuit Ladanyi, and Gyuri's one-true-love Jadwiga - all take shape and form with Fischer's elegant turns of phrase and understated characterization. All in all - a superb book - I've used it whenever I ran out of gift ideas, and so far, no one's complaining!