Imre Kertész’s savagely lyrical and suspenseful new novel traces the continuing echoes the Holocaust and communism in the consciousness of contemporary Eastern Europe.

Ten years after the fall of communism, a writer named B. commits suicide, devastating his circle and deeply puzzling his friend Kingsbitter. For among B.’s effects, Kingsbitter finds a play that eerily predicts events after his death. Why did B.—who was born at Auschwitz and miraculously survived–take his life? As Kingsbitter searches for the answer—and for the novel he is convinced lies hidden among his friend’s papers—Liquidation becomes an inquest into the deeply compromised inner life of a generation. The result is moving, revelatory and haunting.

“Writing that upholds the fragile experience of the individual against the barbaric arbitrariness of history.” –From the Nobel Prize citation “Not since Kafka or Beckett–both clear influences–has a writer packed so much metaphysics into so tight a space.... [A] classic literary detective story.” –The New York Times Book Review “A judgmentÉon the human spiritÉ. By turns sardonic, watchful andÉbitterly despairing.” –Los Angeles Times Book Review