num_pages: 400
description: An intensely personal expose of what happens when family and politics collide during the collapse of the Hungarian Communist regime--for fans of The Lives of Others.Blending fact and fiction No Live Files Remain is the story of how almost thirty years after the fall of communism in Hungary Andras Forgach found out that his mother whom he loved deeply had been an informant for the Kadar regime and had informed not only on acquaintances but also on family friends and even her children. In a work of heartbreaking intensity and nuance Forgach must confront the truth about the woman who was simultaneously an informant as well as a tender and loveable mother a victim and a perpetrator someone to be both pitied and scorned. It pulls back the shroud of secrecy on her complex relationship with her husband her continuous homesickness and desire to return to her homeland Palestine and her devotion to communism and the anti-Zionist feelings that it provoked in her. Forgach dares to give a voice to his deceased mother hold her responsible for her deeds--and as her son defend cherished memories of her as his mother.A work of secrets and lies No Live Files Remain sheds light on socialist Hungary in the seventies and eighties; it is simultaneously a vivid description of a claustrophobic era an evisceration of bureaucratic stupidity and a heartbreakingly sharp-yet-loving portrait of the author's relationship with his parents.
language: English
title: No Live Files Remain
publisher: Hamish Hamilton