{"product_id":"niki-isbn-9781590173183","title":"Niki","description":"“The Dog adopted the Ancsas in the spring of ’48”: so the story begins. The Ancsas are a middle-aged couple living on the outskirts of Budapest in a ruinous Hungary that is just beginning to wake up from the nightmare of World War II. The new Communist government promises to set things straight, and Mr. Ancsa, an engineer, is as eager to get to work building the future as he is to forget the past. The last thing he has time for is a little mongrel bitch, pregnant with her first litter. But Niki knows better, and before long she is part of the Ancsa household. The Ancsas even take her along with them when Mr. Ancsa’s new job requires a move to an apartment in the city.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThen Mr. Ancsa is swept up in a political crackdown—disappearing without a trace. For five years he does not return, five years of absence, silence, fear, and the constant struggle to survive—five years during which Mrs. Ancsa and Niki have only each other.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe story of Niki, an ordinary dog, and the Ancsas, a no less ordinary couple, is an extraordinarily touching, utterly unsentimental, parable about caring, kindness, and the endurance of love.\"[A]n extraordinary novel...It is Niki’s sheer dogginess, so perfectly rendered throughout,  that is at the heart of this novel’s greatness.\" --Katherine A. Powers, \u003ci\u003eThe Boston  Globe\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“I know of no other work that portrays more precisely or convincingly the mind and soul of an animal than this superb novella, which is also one of the most affecting love stories I have ever read. Déry uses a dog’s life to illuminate what it means to be a human being, in particular one struggling to survive a brutal dictatorship.”—Sigrid Nunez, \u003ci\u003eVanity Fair\u003c\/i\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“One of Hungary’s leading novelists...Mr. Dery brings a kind of cunning naivete  that records (or imagines) with utmost seriousness all the tremors of Niki’s soul.  He puts, as it were, the psychological realism of the contemporary novel at the disposal  of a fox terrier.” –\u003ci\u003eThe New York Times\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Outstanding Hungarian novelist and imprisoned  hero of the 1956 revolution.” –\u003ci\u003eThe Nation\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Tibor Dery satirized authority in 1956  with a compassionate story of Niki the dog (and underdog) who triumpts-and is then  imprisoned.” –\u003ci\u003eThe Washington Post\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“The greatest depicter of human beings of our  time.” –Georg Lukacs\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Tibor Déry was a dissenter, a subversive revolutionary and,  in his old age, a jailbird. He was also one of the greatest stylists in the history  of Hungarian literature.” –Péter Nádas\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“\u003ci\u003eNiki\u003c\/i\u003e is a masterpiece, like \u003ci\u003eOf Mice and  Men, \u003c\/i\u003eof the presentation of ‘Man’s inhumanity to man.” –Richard Church\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“One of the  most prominent writers in Hungary.” –\u003ci\u003eThe New York Times\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“In \u003ci\u003eNiki\u003c\/i\u003e there is nothing  mawkish: one’s heart is truly touched. By centering his seemingly artless story on  the figure of a dog–that humblest, most poignant, and tenacious symbol of devotion,  of the need to be attached–Tibor Déry has done more than present a contemporary political  and human tragedy; he has illumined what might be called canine situation under the  aspect of eternity.” –Rosamond Lehmann\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“The biggest international success of Déry’s  own writing career was his novella, \u003ci\u003eNiki: The Story of a Dog\u003c\/i\u003e, which appeared in Hungary  in 1956 and was soon translated into various languages. It is an apparently simple  storyline embodying a sharp critique of hard line Stalinist dictatorship. Here, too,  the values are clear, as are their anthiseses: trust versus suspicion, freewill versus  coercion, logic versus paranoia, generosity versus pettiness, love versus fear. In  the West, no doubt, \u003ci\u003eNiki\u003c\/i\u003e’s success was helped by the fact that its author was in  prison, and was therefore available as Cold War material.” –George Szirtes, \u003ci\u003eLove  and Other Stories\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“[Déry’s stories] remind me of stories by Toslstoy, Chekhov, Verga,  Lawrence and Hemingway. Here is one of the outstanding wrters of the twentieth century.”  –Ben Sonnenberg\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Tibor Déry has few equals among writers in Hungarian…[He] is one  of the …masters of that great tradition of European realism that we associated with  the name of Thomas Mann, and he deserves our close attention.” –\u003ci\u003eTimes Literary Supplement\u003c\/i\u003e (London)\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“The strains of making fiction under…pressure show everywhere in \u003ci\u003eNiki\u003c\/i\u003e:  it’s a tiny story, but told, for all it’s simplicity, with a strange effect of density,  as if it is compressed under a great weight.” –\u003ci\u003eThe Cambridge Quarterly\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“…a tender  allegory of the years of postwar repression in Hungary.” –\u003ci\u003eThe Observer\u003c\/i\u003e (London)\u003cb\u003eTibor Déry \u003c\/b\u003e(1894–1977) was born in Budapest into a prosperous family of partly Jewish descent. In 1919, he joined the Communist Party and served in the ill-fated revolutionary government of Béla Kun, which collapsed before the end of the year. For much of the next fifteen years he lived in exile, returning to Hungary for good in 1935. Though initially well-regarded by Hungary’s post–World War II Communist government, by 1953 Déry had been expelled from the party for his criticism of its increasingly repressive policies. He then supported Imre Nagy’s reformist government and, after the Soviet suppression of the 1956 uprising, was sentenced to nine years in prison. Writers around the world (including Camus, Sartre, E.M. Forster, Rebecca West, and Alberto Moravia) rallied on his behalf, and in 1960 Déry was not only granted amnesty but allowed to publish and travel in relative freedom. Among Déry’s major works are \u003ci\u003eLove and Other Stories\u003c\/i\u003e, the novel \u003ci\u003eThe Unfinished Sentence,\u003c\/i\u003e and an autobiography, No Verdict.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eGeorge Szirtes\u003c\/b\u003e is a Hungarian-born English poet and translator. He received the T.S. Eliot Prize for \u003ci\u003eReel\u003c\/i\u003e (2004), and his \u003ci\u003eNew and Collected Poems\u003c\/i\u003e were published in 2008. As a translator of poetry and fiction he has won a variety of prizes and awards, including the European Poetry Translation Prize and, in fact, the Déry Prize.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eEdward Hyams \u003c\/b\u003ewon the Scott Moncrieff Translation Prize for \u003ci\u003eJoan of Arc: By Herself and Her Witnesses \u003c\/i\u003eby Regine Pernoud.","brand":"NYRB Classics","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46304402538725,"sku":"NP9781590173183","price":16.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9781590173183.jpg?v=1767733749","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/niki-isbn-9781590173183","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}