Under Budapest

In 2010, as Budapest simmers with pre-election nationalism, a human head is discovered on Gellert Hill. In 1956, a woman disappears in the revolution that so briefly captures the attention of the world. The answer to both mysteries lies in the fabled tunnels under the city. In the literary equivalent of a jigsaw puzzle, Under Budapest carves out the conquests, calamities, and anguish of two North American Hungarian families and those whose lives they've touched. Tibor travels to Hungary, recovering from a disastrous love affair, and finds himself embroiled in a criminal act; his mother, Agnes, journeys to unearth what happened to her long-missing sister; Janos, a self-styled schemer, conspires to make it rich. Their lives intertwine in a conflagration of events: the legacy of wartime violence, past allegiances, and long-buried rivalries. At once a probing family drama, sterling crime thriller, and hypnotic ode to memory's power, Ailsa Kay's intimate spectacle demonstrates that the past is never far from the surface, and the stories we tell carry their own repercussions.