The Notebook Trilogy

Brutal, laconic, haunting … it argues for the necessity of stories in the midst of tragedy – Ocean Vuong
A book through which I discovered what kind of a person I really want to be … awoke in me a cold and cruel passion – Slavoj Žižek
A great book, in the absolute * TLS *
Both stylistically inventive and politically incisive – Eimear McBride
A stunning, brutal and beautifully written (and translated) book – George Szirtes
A dark study of the human psyche * The New York Times Book Review *
Kristóf’s sentences are like … skeletons, commemorations of indescribable sadness that have been meticulously scrubbed of gore and gristle * New Yorker *
Closing this chillingly unsentimental novel, I felt that it had contrived to say absolutely everything about the Second World War and its aftermath in Central Europe * Sunday Times *
A haunting, harrowing tale that lingers in the imagination long after you’ve turned the last page * The Washington Post *
An almost lyrical intensity … fierce and disturbing * The New York Times *

Ágota Kristóf was born in Csikvánd, Hungary, in 1935. Aged twenty-one, Kristóf and her husband and four-month-old daughter fled the Soviet repression of the Hungarian Uprising to Austria and were resettled in French-speaking Switzerland. Working in a factory, Kristóf slowly learned the language of her adopted country. Her first novel, The Notebook (1986), won the European Prize for French literature and was translated into forty languages. Kristóf’s other work included plays and stories as well as The Proof (1988) and The Third Lie (1991), which complete the trilogy begun with The Notebook. She died in 2011.

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