Where are you, Matias?

Author's name: Agota Kristof Publisher: Al-Jamal Publications for Publishing and Distribution Year of publication: 2019 Literary classification: World Literature Brief about the book: Where are you, Matias? I lost everything because I left you. I tried without you. I played, stole, killed, loved. But none of that made sense. Without you, play was meaningless, the revolution was without a spark, and love was without taste. For twenty years, I was nothing but a gloomy absence. Agota Kristof... Hungarian writer born in 1953 — a Hungarian woman under the Soviet Union's grip, which led to Agota fleeing at the age of twenty-one with her husband and their infant child to exile. To Switzerland. An exile she did not speak the language of, a world she knew nothing about, crushed there under work in a watch factory, an exile that tore her spirit with longing for her homeland. She was given the French language, "the enemy language" as she called it, an unwelcome gift for writing in.