I Don't Care

Above, below, blue heads, thistles. Somebody singing something. I don't care: it's not even pretty. The song is sad, and old, so old. Written immediately before her acclaimed Notebook trilogy and selected by Ágota Kristóf herself, I Don't Care presents the Hungarian master at the height of her game. Harrowing yet delightfully whimsical, these short fictions oscillate between parables, surrealist anecdotes, and stories animated by a realism stripped to the bone. In Kristóf's world, cruelty abounds, but in a way that shifts the reader's gaze to aspects of our shared reality, past and present, that one would not want to be without. The themes of exile and existential alienation are undeniable - as is the force of every sentence, making for extraordinary and essential reading that surprises at every turn.