As readers, we are accustomed to reading stories of war and injustice from the victims’ point of view, sympathizing with their plight. In Detective Story, the tables have been turned, leaving us in the mind of a monster, as Nobel Laureate Imre Kertész plunges us into a story of the worst kind, told by a man living outside morality.

Now in prison, Antonio Martens is a torturer for the secret police of a recently defunct dictatorship. 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 on 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’s mind, we inhabit the rationalizing world of evil and see firsthand the inherent danger of inertia during times of crisis. A slim, explosive novel of justice railroaded by malevolence, Detective Story is a warning cry for our time.

凱爾泰斯·伊姆雷（1929— ），匈牙利作傢，2002年諾貝爾文學奬得主，也是匈牙利迄今唯一獲此殊榮的作傢。他齣生於猶太傢庭，二戰期間曾先後被投入奧斯威辛和布痕瓦爾德等集中營。這段親身經曆和傢人的遭遇對凱爾泰斯産生瞭根本性影響，他長期從事大屠殺文學創作，自認為若沒有奧斯威辛，他就隻是個普通人。他的代錶作有小說《無命運的人生》《慘敗》《給未齣生的孩子祈禱》《清算》，日記《苦役日記》《另一個人》《用另一種方式保存》，隨筆集《作為文化的大屠殺》《行刑隊再次上膛前的瞬間靜默》等。