Trilogy

Agota Kristof was born in Csikvand, Hungary, in 1935. Aged twenty-one, Kristof 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, Kristof slowly learned the language of her adopted country. Her first novel, The Notebook (1986), gained international recognition and was translated into forty languages. Kristof ’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.

‘At the heart of this acrid trilogy ... we can feel the author’s slowburning rage at the wholesale erasure of certainty and continuity in the world of her childhood and adolescence. She will reassemble a shattered world on her own rigorous terms, and watch us wince and shudder in the process.’ (Jonathan Keates, Times Literary Supplement) ‘The Notebook is a great book, in the absolute.’ (Beverley Bie Brahic, TLS ‘Books of the Year’) ‘A stunning, brutal and beautifully written (and translated) book.’ (George Szirtes) ‘Both stylistically inventive and politically incisive, [The Notebook] is a book to worry readers for years.’ (Eimear McBride, Financial Times) ‘There is a book through which I discovered what kind of a person I really want to be: The Notebook, the first volume of Agota Kristof’s trilogy.’ (Slavoj Zizek) ‘What happens at the end is stated simply but echoes with the cumulative force of everything that has come before, and is devastating. In its odd, memorable, unique way, The Notebook is a masterpiece.’ (John Self)