Tibor Fischer

If you love philosophy and have an appreciation for the absurd you will probably enjoy this book. Tibor Fischer has written a novel that I found dependable in producing humor evidenced by my smiles and more often than not outright laughter.

The story demonstrates the sublime absurdity of a middle-aged philosopher who is running from his academic publisher and others; and while doing so finds himself in France about to join with a semi-successful thief (the thief has recently been released show more from prison) ultimately entering into a series of adventures. Coffin uses a first-person narration (numbered in sections, like a philosophical treatise) that is not terribly mellifluous, but becomes fun through the use of wisecracks about Epictetus and Zeno--as well as Coffin's unexplained fascination with words that begin with the letter Z. The style gets to you (at least it did for this reader). He juxtaposes intellectual metaphysics and juvenile gangster fantasy as evidenced by the line, ``The thing about a gun is, it's like being on the right side of a Socratic dialogue."

The result of the philosophical and adventurous mish-mash is a delightfully wacky book that has echoes of Tristram Shandy and other books of that sort. Read it at your own philosophical risk. show less

A marvellous read; full of witty remarks and asides, a fast paced tale of Hungary 1944-1956 and one young man, Gyuri and his friends. This is an intelligent and well thought through novel; it made me laugh out loud and then sob. Because of the subject matter the humour is often black and involve awful situations, but Tibor Fischer writes sympathetically about Hungary and so is not offensive.

Had I known that Fischer has become an apologist for Viktor Orban, I would have thought twice about buying this book, but I think it deserved its Booker shortlisting, as it is well written and very funny in places.

The book is a picaresque journey though the Hungary of Fischer's parents from the end of the war to the 1956 revolution and its aftermath. The main protagonist is Gyuri Fischer, who is a member of a successful basketball team whose success owes much more to his talented friend show more Pataki. Gyuri's opportunities are limited by his class, though his former bookmaker father is now broke.

Fischer likes using unusual words for comic effect - the words I looked up while reading this included lucubrate, mulierosity, pinguid, stultiloquence and valetudinarian. show less

A mad romp with a serious message, Under the Frog is the story of the education, in one way or another, of young Hungarian basketballer Gyuri in the years between the end of the Second World War and the 1956 Uprising.
One of my top five desert island books, this is funny and clever but wears its intellegence lightly. The characters are engaging and read like young men anywhere, which makes it all the more brutal when the state intrudes into their lives. Fischer handles the climate of paranoia show more deftly without the overwhelming seriousness that might kill the narrative, and handles love, learning and employment for the main focus characters with a skill that he has struggled to reproduce since. show less