Dossier K: A Memoir Paperback - 2013

Media reviews

"A book full of marvellous, intoxicating answers…It is rare that we find what at first sight seems a philosophical quibble of a memoir such a page turner, but that is what it is. The reader is constantly on the scent of truth about the most basic, most dreadful, most vital human affairs. It is what makes Kertesz a great writer."
—The Times (UK)

”An unflinching memoir in the form of a Socratic dialogue with himself about his extraordinary life…Kertész is meditative, insightful, profound.”
—Publisher’s Weekly (starred review)

”Kertész’s sensibility defies classification. To call him unique would be to miss the point; it would diminish his frankness, his modesty, his shocking honesty that, he would remind us, is not the same as telling the truth…A necessary work, beautifully translated.”
—ALA Booklist

“The opposite of a Bildungsroman, its defining features are not organic development and continuity but rupture and shock. . . Kertész attempts to reconnect to humanity, to define himself as an individual, as the subject of his own history.”
—Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung 

“A counterpart of Günter Grass’s Peeling The Onion. Just as accurate and relentless, a book of autobiographical self-questioning, which undermines any kind of dogmatism.”
—Neue Zurcher Zeitung

Priase for Imre Kertesz 
“Kertész, like Beckett, is deadly serious and his work is a profound meditation on the great and enduring themes of love, death and the problem of evil.” —John Banville, The Nation