The Melancholy of Resistance, Laszlo Krasznahorkai's magisterial, surreal novel,
depicts a chain of mysterious events in a small Hungarian town. A circus, promi
sing to display the stuffed body of the largest whale in the world, arrives in t
he dead of winter, prompting bizarre rumours. Word spreads that the circus folk
have a sinister purpose in mind, and the frightened citizens cling to any manife
station of order they can find - music, cosmology, fascism.
