The author, a noted playwright in his native Hungary, was imprisoned in Auschwitz and Buchenwald and was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2002. His second novel, following on from the much-admired Fatelessness of 1975, deals with a concentration camp survivor, B, who is also a writer. The story is seen from the point of view of B's friend and editor, Kingbitter, who has taken upon himself the role of literary executor after B commits suicide.

Kingbitter is obsessed with the idea that, among the bundles of papers his friend left behind, there is the manuscript of a great novel describing B's experiences in Auschwitz. Sarah, B's mistress, can cast no light on the whereabouts of the work; Judit, B's former wife, with whom Kingbitter has been having an affair, claims to have destroyed the novel at her former husband's insistence.

Much of Liquidation takes the form of a play — also written by B — in which this fruitless quest is documented. The epigrammatical style is reminiscent of Beckett, a quotation from whom acts as epigraph to the book. the dry humour and laconic use of dialogue is also Beckettian, as is the prevailing sense of life's utter meaninglessness. Readers may be reminded of another work about “disappearance” resulting from the Holocaust: Georges Perec's La Disparition. In this it is not a novel but the letter “e” that goes missing — both symbolic of a more terrible liquidation.

Liquidation by Imre Kertész

Vintage, 7.99

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