Krasznahorkai plays with a tradition in which yokels tend to be boobs, and, fittingly, his narrator is an acerbic, misanthrope, the doctor. Residents are at once comically loutish, and incompetent. The autumn rain falls incessantly, and characters smoke nonstop under drizzle and downpour, as if connected to a fire that will not be put out. They live in its rotting houses and congregate in its tumbledown, spider-infested pub. Its inhabitants include peasants, a mechanic, a headmaster, a doctor, a couple of teenage whores, their drunken mother, vicious younger brother, and demented little sister. A large part of the action takes place on or around an unnamed estate that is largely abandoned. Krasznahorkai’s depiction of loutish peasants and a work collective in ruins must have been a slap in the face of Communist censorship. Krasznahorkai published the novel four years before the fall of Communism, and, indeed, the book targets the ravages of totalitarianism in Hungary and beyond. Presented in breathtaking English by George Szirtes, Satantango takes place in a world where Satan rules people’s actions and the meanings of their lives. The tale includes enough metaphysical speculation to let us know that we’re in one of the tonier quarters of intellectual fiction-department of existential angst. Published in Hungarian in 1985 and recently out from New Directions, Satantango opens with an epigram from The Castle and features characters on leave from Waiting for Godot.

Krasznahorkai laszlo satantango