Siege 13: Stories
Canadian writer Dobozy was the inaugural Fulbright Visiting Research Chair in Creative Writing  at New York University and received a PEN/O’Henry Prize for “The Restoration of the Villa Where Tíbor Kálmán Once Lived,” which appears in this story collection. The siege the book’s title refers to is that of Budapest at the end of WWII, and several other of the 13 tales are also set in and around Budapest at that time. Most, though, are stories of survivors living in exile in Canada, lives lived in the shadow of atrocities participated in, witnessed, or avoided through subterfuge or complicity. One character’s perspective summarizes the fate of many: “The things he’d seen in Budapest during the winter of 1945 had not ceased . . . as if the siege stretched right across history.” Though pedestrian prose occasionally softens the impact, these are stories worth telling, and Dobozy is a gifted storyteller in his elegant plotting and touches of surrealism. --Michael Autrey