Visegrad is very funny and very insightful--into Central Europe, into
the US, into the expat mind. I also have to reread it, probably right
away, to sort out all the dizzying detail Robertson has packed it with.
So, while I'm rereading it, you should be getting started now on reading
it the first time.
--Arthur Phillips, author of Prague and The King at the Edge of the
World
Meet Rye, a young American writer adrift in Visegrad, where the national
sport is appearing to work as hard as possible while doing nothing at
all. Things get complicated in this rollicking satire when Rye partners
with a loan-shark who has purchased the outstanding student debt of his
fellow expats. He squares their accounts by signing the likes of Colin
Having, who suspects the world's dogs of conspiring against him, H.
Defer, who is developing a universal theory based on the wetness of
feet, and the SEC man, who has been sent to Visegrad to determine how
Rye's boss acquires individual student loans.
Before long, Rye discovers he is being followed. Customers disappear and
he is no longer free to leave the country. Rye realizes that he must
sabotage the lucrative business he has helped build, or else abandon his
friends to a shady cabal in the Visegrad government.
Visegrad presents a world at once familiar and preposterous--an
imaginary world, and yet one that is historically accurate in its an
amalgamation of Prague, Budapest, Warsaw, Krakow, and Berlin. It is
about getting away with something--being young, being cruel, falling in
love. A must for fans of Prague (Arthur Phillips); The Sellout (Paul
Beatty); Necessary Errors (Caleb Crain); All That Man Is (David
Szalay); and Temporary People (Deepak Unnikrishnan).
