„Faludy who died in 2006 was my teacher for most of my life and my close friend towards the end of his. I have been privileged to discuss the events of the book with two of its principal characters, also close friends of the author. Both were impressed with the veracity of Faludy’s recollection and moved by his power of detailed recall.
The poet was relentlessly pursued all his life by the hostility of the agents of repression as well as the love of a devoted public. He attended several West European universities taking courses in the arts and history without ever sitting an exam. He burst on the literary stage of Budapest as a young man just before the rise of Nazi oppression with a collection of ballads exuding the love of freedom, translated and adapted from the mediaeval French of Francois Villon. The 45th printing of that book has just been sold out.
His books were seized, burnt and banned by both the Nazis and the Communists. He left Hungary in time to fight the Second World War with the American Air Force while members of his family and more than half a million other Hungarian Jews were murdered by the Nazis during the Holocaust. He returned home immediately after the war to be imprisoned by the Communists in 1949 on trumped up charges. This is the main theme of the Penguin autobiography covering a lively and horrendous 15-year period from his first exile to his release from prison in 1953.”