‘The knowledge that in a few minutes, when I left the hotel, I would have no home, no bed of my own, no possessions for a long time to come and that I was going towards absolute insecurity

that made me rather happy.’

My Happy Days in Hell (1962) is Gyorgy Faludy’s grimly beautiful autobiography of his battle to survive tyranny and oppression. Fleeing Hungary in 1938 as the German army approaches, acclaimed poet Faludy journeys to Paris, where he finds a lover but merely a cursory asylum. When the French capitulate to the Nazis, Faludy travels to North Africa, then on to America, where he volunteers for military service. Missing his homeland and determined to do the right thing, he returns

only to be imprisoned, tortured, and slowly starved, eventually becoming one of only twenty-one survivors of his camp.

‘A man whose moral compass in all the great questions of the twentieth century has never deviated from the correct direction, no matter what the cost to himself’ Telegraph