Set in the 1970s and ’80s, The Hangman’s House narrates the life and times of a Hungarian family in Romania. Those were extraordinary times of oppression, poverty and hopelessness, and Andrea Tompa’s latest novel depicts everyday life under the brutal communist dictatorship of Nicolae Ceaușescu, referred to by the narrator as an unnamed “one-eared hangman.” Ceaușescu is omnipresent throughout the story—in portraits in classrooms and schoolbooks, in the empty food stores, in TV programs, in obligatory Party demonstrations. Most insidiously, he is present in the dreams and nightmares of common people, who, in this cruel period of history, become cruel to one another, just like the dictator.
 
Our narrator, a teenage “Girl,” observes life through tangled, almost interminable sentences, trying to understand and process the many questions in her life: why her family is falling apart; why her mother has three jobs; why her father becomes an alcoholic; why her grandmother dreams of “Hungarian times”; and, most troubling, why there is persecution all around. Brutal though the times are, Girl’s narration is far from a mere indictment. It is suffused with love, tenderness and irony.
 
Written by a woman and featuring a young woman narrator, The Hangman's House focuses intently on how women play the principal roles in holding together the resilient fabric of society. Evocative of the celebrated wry humor that distinguishes the best of Hungarian literature, Tompa’s novel is a tour de force that will introduce a brilliant writer to English-language readers.

A rich, layered narrative that explores the indomitable human spirit against the backdrop of Romania’s complex history in the 1950s and ’60s.

A rural area not far from the city of Cluj-Napoca, a former Hungarian province that has been part of Romania since 1920. World War II has ended and the region is under the firm clasp of Stalinist collectivization. In the atmospheric village of Kolozsvár, Omertà unfolds a riveting tale through four poignant perspectives, each peeling back the layers of its central characters’ lives against the backdrop of a tumultuous Eastern Europe in the mid-twentieth century.

Kali, a peasant woman, escapes an abusive marriage to embark on a transformative journey to Kolozsvár, seeking refuge and purpose. She is employed as a maid by Vilmos, a reluctant Communist Party member with an unwavering dedication to his garden. As Vilmos’s botanical brilliance attracts the state’s attention, a clash between personal desires and political obligations ensues. Annush, the third narrator, a lovestruck teenager, becomes entangled in a complex web of emotions, grappling with love, loss, and the evolving landscape of her homeland. The tale deepens with Eleonora, who, seeking solace in a monastery, becomes a casualty of political purges and the suppression of religious faith under Romania’s oppressive regime.

In this epic novel, Romanian-born Hungarian author Andrea Tompa skillfully intertwines these tales, shedding light on the injustices and corruption of a regime that sought to extinguish cultural identities. The lives of Kali, Vilmos, Annush, and Eleonora weave a tapestry of love, resilience, the virtue of roses, and the quiet strength required to endure in the face of political turmoil.