The Devil Is a Black Dog

September 15, 2014
This impressive debut collection of 19 stories comes from Jászberényi, a Hungarian news correspondent who has covered the conflicts in Eastern Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East. The book employs minimalist prose and, in several of the stories, the recurring protagonist Daniel Marosh, an ill-fated, sardonic war journalist. In “The Strongest Knot,” Marosh reveals that he is a chronic insomniac due to problems with his adulterous wife who has blocked his visitations with their child. “The Dead Ride Fast” finds Marosh covering the political revolution in Cairo, where he bumps into an old colleague and kindred spirit, the German photographer Sahra Gamalt. In “Something About the Job” an older, crankier Marosh is told by his boss that his subpar work makes him expendable unless he is willing to show a promising young photojournalist the ropes on assignment in Chad. The other standout tales, such as the unsettling and darkly comedic “The Desert Is Cold In the Morning” and “How We Didn’t Win,” demonstrate the range of Jászberényi’s storytelling talents.

Starred review from November 1, 2014
Nineteen interconnected short stories about the toll of war, written by someone who was there.The old joke says that if fairy tales begin, "Once upon a time," then war stories always start with, "You ain't gonna believe this...." Translated from the Hungarian, journalist Jaszberenyi's stories about war correspondents, combatants and victims ring as true as any nonfiction. In the opener, "The Fever," we meet the author's main channel to readers, a jaded war reporter named Daniel Marosh, who's suffering from his illness in a Sudanese backwater on his way to yet another conflict zone. "I am smiling because I don't regret anything, really," he tells us. "I never wanted to live a sensible life. I never wanted to be a model citizen, have a family, or even a child. If something like that happened, it would end in total failure. I only have answers when the circumstances are clear, like life and death; that's when I feel best, when the questions are easy, uncomplicated by the reflexes of a dying civilization." This is heady, dizzying writing, rapt with cleareyed descriptions of armed children, brutal executions, sniper fire and sandstorms. Whether set in Sudan, Egypt or Gaza, each story reveals something about the nature of war and finds a kind of clinical sympathy not only for those caught up in it, but also for those who wage it. The best stories, like "Something About the Job," delve into the psyche of the book's determined journalist, explaining to us why he is the way he is and questioning whether the war made him or he sought out the scene. Despite the book's very spare language, Jaszberenyi finds a kind of poetry in these wars, even as he declines to turn a blind eye to the suffering they bring. These stories sound more like Philip Caputo or Tim O'Brien than a postmodern accounting of current events. A master class in how to tell a war story.

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