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Set in a nameless Communist country based on Romania, where Dragoman was raised, “The White King” is narrated by Djata, an 11-year-old boy whose father has been sent to a labor camp for a crime — signing “an open letter of protest” against the government — that brings ruin to his family. [...] Dragoman, who now lives in Budapest, writes in Hungarian, and his prose is scintillating and acrobatic, featuring serpentine sentences that bend with each turn of Djata’s mind. Disregarding standard punctuation, the novel’s language acquires a kind of trudging exuberance — part exhaustion, part frenzy — that amply conveys the boy’s mood.

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His talent is at its best when depicting the merciless cruelty of children, the brutality of adults, deprivation, fears arising from different roots and terror at large which is characteristic in all totalitarian systems.