Budapest, 1956 Péter has been vengeful ever since the Russians took Milena from him. In this dramatic novel, he gets a new chance as revolution finally breaks out and he meets the equally vindictive, though enigmatic, Katalin at a barricade.

Caught up in the heat of revolution one night, two Western journalists start to cover events from the inside, living with Katalin and Péter’s resistance group. Should the journalists’ pictures fall into the wrong hands, they could seriously endanger the resistance, but they depict a reality that can persuade the United Nations to mediate.

Péter develops strong feelings for Katalin, but at a critical moment he discovers she has another secret. Tibor Rathe, an officer in the security police, has tried for some time to uncover Katalin’s secret for his own ends. The revolution gives him a new possibility to harm her.

While much of the action in this story takes place in Budapest (the book has a street plan), Péter and Katalin’s fight for freedom and its aftermath also unfolds in London and Paris, and not least New York, where not everything is as it should be in and around the corridors of the UN due to espionage.

Here you can read more about the book, about the revolution in Hungary during which the novel unfolds, and the author.

She stopped in a dark recess in the wall on the second floor, alive to the round pillars and balusters of pale brown imitation marble. They might cause a ricochet. In the shadowy passageway leading from the tall, heavy entrance gates towards the courtyard below, three enemy soldiers had installed themselves with a light machine-gun on a tripod. A shaft of sunlight exposed the dusts wirling busily in her wake. She watched it settle in the cool air as she got her breath back.