Under the Frog is a hilarious book by Mr Fischer. It's about life in Hungary in the 1950s from the point fo view of members of a basketball team. I didn't think it could be funny, but a few pages changed my mind! Some quotes:
Years before Jozsi from the ground floor had returned from a summer holiday visiting relatives in Transylvania and recounted in horrified tone: "They actually fuck ducks. I'm not joking, I saw it." "Don't be ridiculous," Pataki had riposted, "it must have been a goose."
Basketball was better than a real job where you were expected to work for the money they didnt give you.
The Hungarian Second Army, like all hungarian armies, had the unfortunate habit of getting wiped out.
The German soldier was trailing behind the others, clutching in his left hand a good portion of the intestines spilling out from an otherwise quite smart uniform.
As secret police went, the AVO werent terribly secret about what they did - half the business of being secret policemen is people knowing about you, word-of-mouth publicity.
There was something flattering about being arrested... but being in custody was becoming a habit; he really had to cut down.
Mathematics had this to recommend it, if nothing else; it made everything else, ants, English, push-ups, ironing, washing-up, beguiling and wonderful. Whole galaxies of interests had popped open now that the maths exam was drawing close; anything unconnected with maths was irressitable.
Hungary was littered with commemorative notices such as "Petofi walked past here" and "Petofi almost walked past here".
They (young communists) were loud in their endorsements of Marxism, as anyone in their new shoes would be.
a place where the shoe was still seen as a daring new fashion idea, where only the sound of crops growing there disturbed the peace...
His own mother, if Farago was waiting to be executed, would only say things like "Make that noose tighter" or "Is it permissible to tip the hangman?"
Every now and then Sulyok would feel obliged to give a reading form the Party newspaper which of course had the same content as the other papers but there were some fascinating differences in the punctuation.
It was supposed to be ...well paid, ie; you had change in your pocket after you had eaten.
The storemaster wheeled on him: "May God and all his holy saints fuck you!" he exclaimed in what seemed a deplorable lapse for an avowed atheist and a historical materialist.
"Has the new Hungary overcome the old three-layered class system of workers, bourgeoisie and nobility?" Roka asked, swiftly providing the answer (before anyone thought he was posing a serious question). "Not quite. There are still three classes in the new Hungary: those who have been to prison, those who are in prison and those who are going to prison."
The good thing about Mao, like Marx, and in particular Lenin and Stalin, was that at one point or another, he had written or said everything from "I ordered the steak medium-rare" to "Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny" to "Chattanooga Choo-Choo". Everything had passed their lips, so you couldn't go wrong quoting from imagination.
Wu's courtesy extended to the basketball court, where on those rare occasions when he unwittingly managed to get hold of the ball, he was too civil to refuse to hand it over to whoever approached him.
Graffiti in Hungarian cell: If you can read this, you're in trouble.
"Attempted suicide is punishable by death."
When he heard the news of Stalin's death, form the radio, Gyuri was shampooing his hair. Apart from experiencing an intense well-being, his first thought was whether the whole system would collapse in time for him not to have to take the exam in Marxism-Leninism he was due to take the following week.
He's doing a three yeare course at the (Communist) Party College. Three years! I mean how long does it take to learn to say "Yes, comrade"?
There was a statue of a Soviet soldier known locally as the Unknown Watch-thief.
"You were in jail?"
"Only for a few days. Bribery."
"Bribery. Who did you bribe?"
"No, the problem was I hadnt bribed anyone. They were very upset."
The old joke about two Hungarians on a desert island resulting in three political parties...
He was quite willing to state his life that the only things in the book that weren't downright lies were the author's name and the commas.
Tears, in teams, abseiled down his face.
