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Antonio Martens was a torturer for the secret police of a recently defunct dictatorship. Now in prison, he requests and is given writing materials in his cell, and what he has to recount is his involvement in the surveillance, torture, and assassination of Federigo and Enrique Salinas, a prominent father and son whose principled but passive opposition to the regime left them vulnerable to the secret police. Preying upon young Enrique's aimless life, the secret police began to position him as a subversive and then targeted his father. Once this plan was set into motion, any means were justified to reach the regime's chosen end - the destruction of an entire liberal class. Inside Martens' mind, we inhabit the rationalising world of evil and see first-hand the inherent danger of inertia during times of crisis.

A Gályanapló kivételes szellemi élmény, mert olyan napló, amelyben minden személyes és semmi sem esetleges, olyan írásmű, amelynek minden mondata arról tanúskodik, hogy mind a történelembe vetettség, mind a hétköznapi történések a legalkalinasabb formát jelentik a transzcendencia megélésére. Ez a könyv segít a nem-felejtésben. Segít, hogy ne felejtsük el túl hamar: diktatúrában éltünk. Egyetlen mondatában elfér negyven év tapasztalata: "Eddig a hazugság volt itt az igazság, de ma már a hazugság sem igaz." (Temesi László)
"Napló-regény: legszívesebben így definiálnám. Napló, mert harminc éve vezetett följegyzéseimből áll; és regény mert végül is egy megtett útról tanúskodik. Formája, tartalina az epika örök alapképlete: a hős kihajózik, vándorol, majd megérkezik valahová. A klasszikus minta szerint persze haza kellene érkeznie. Hősöm számára azonban ez a fogalom - akárcsak mind a többi - meglehetősen problematikussá vált." (Kertész Imre)
"Nekem ugyan nincsenek ťidentitásproblémáimŤ. Hogy ťmagyarŤ vagyok, semmivel sem képtelenebb annál, mint hogy ťzsidó vagyokŤ; s hogy ťzsidóŤ vagyok mivel sem képtelenebb, mint hogy egyáltalán vagyok." (IC.L)
"Én sose gondoltam arra, hogy zsidó vagyok, leszámítva a veszélyeztetettség pillanatait." (K.I)

Hungarian Imre Kertész was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2002 for “writing that upholds the fragile experience of the individual against the barbaric arbitrariness of history.” His conversation with literary historian Thomas Cooper that is presented here speaks specifically to this relationship between the personal and the historical. In The Holocaust as Culture, Kertész recalls his childhood in Buchenwald and Auschwitz and as a writer living under the so-called soft dictatorship of communist Hungary. Reflecting on his experiences of the Holocaust and the Soviet occupation of Hungary following World War II, Kertész likens the ideological machinery of National Socialism to the oppressive routines of life under communism. He also discusses the complex publication history of Fateless, his acclaimed novel about the experiences of a Hungarian child deported to Auschwitz, and the lack of interest with which it was initially met in Hungary due to its failure to conform to the communist government’s simplistic history of the relationship between Nazi occupiers and communist liberators. The underlying theme in the dialogue between Kertész and Cooper is the difficulty of mediating the past and creating models for interpreting history, and how this challenges ideas of self. The title The Holocaust as Culture is taken from that of a talk Kertész gave in Vienna for a symposium on the life and works of Jean Améry. That essay is included here, and it reflects on Améry’s fear that history would all too quickly forget the fates of the victims of the concentration camps. Combined with an introduction by Thomas Cooper, the thoughts gathered here reveal Kertész’s views on the lengthening shadow of the Holocaust as an ever-present part of the world’s cultural memory and his idea of the crucial functions of literature and art as the vessels of this memory.

Kingbitter, an editor at a publishing house on the verge of closure, believes himself to have been the closest friend of a celebrated writer and Auschwitz survivor, B, who recently committed suicide. Amongst the papers B has left him, Kingbitter finds a play entitled Liquidation that uncannily predicts the behaviour of B's ex-wife, his mistress and Kingbitter himself. As he obsessively reads and rereads the play, Kingbitter becomes transfixed with the idea that buried within these papers is B's great novel: the book that will explain his relationship with Auschwitz.