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Fiction Coming Of Age

Dead Heat

by (author) Benedek Totth

translated by Ildiko Noemi Nagy

Publisher
Biblioasis
Initial publish date
Nov 2019
Category
Coming of Age, Sports
  • Paperback / softback

    ISBN
    9781771963015
    Publish Date
    Nov 2019
    List Price
    $21.95

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Where to buy it

Description

“Let’s say it up front: reading Dead Heat, the Hungarian writer Benedek Totth’s first novel, is a shock ... [like] the cry of love and desperation flung out by a generation that’s finished before it can begin, before it can even reach maturity.”—Yann Perreau, Les Inrockuptibles

Adrift in testosterone and booze, teenage members of a competitive swim team prowl the nighttime clubs and highways of Budapest. Their parents and coaches, demoralized and debased by decades of totalitarian rule, either pay them no attention or too much of the wrong kind. When the boys aren’t setting records in the pool, they’re treating old men, young women, and animals that happen into their path as objects at their disposal—but after their recklessness explodes into violence, one of them must find resources in both his heart and his disciplined swimmer's body to confront his responsibility for a horrific crime. Brilliantly translated into breakneck English by Ildikó Noémi Nagy, Dead Heat is a blistering debut and a harrowing, indelible story about young men coming of age in an abandoned generation.

About the authors

Contributor Notes

Born in Hungary in 1977, Benedek Totth studied American literature and now works as an editor and translator in Budapest. His translations into Hungarian include works by Stephen King, Cormac McCarthy, Hunter S. Thompson and William S. Burroughs. Dead Heat, his first novel, caused a sensation in Hungary, where it won the Margó Prize for best first novel of the year. It has been published in translation in France and Slovakia.

Born in 1975 in Vancouver, Ildikó Noemi Nagy grew up in the United States and studied in Budapest at the Franz Liszt Music Academy and Eötvös Lóránd University. Her short story collection Eggyétörve (Broken in One) appeared in German translation. Her previous translations from Hungarian include Eva Fejos’s novels Bangkok Transit and Vacation in Naples.

Excerpt: Dead Heat (by (author) Benedek Totth; translated by Ildiko Noemi Nagy)

SQUARE SILENCE

I’m sprawled out in bed practising imaginary flip turns in a semi-daze when Sabotage from Beastie Boys starts blaring, and my body floods with adrenaline. After I finally realise it’s my ringtone I’m hearing, I turn on my side and start feeling around on the floor. Eventually, I find it under my t-shirt in my shoe. Somehow last night, it ended up in there. I answer. It’s Buoy, he’s bored and wants to go down to the thermal bath. I’m still only half-conscious, so instead of telling him to fuck off, I agree to meet him in twenty behind the old movie theatre. Buoy – judging by his voice, anyway – doesn’t seem too distressed about last night’s party. I don’t remember every last detail, plus these nights are pretty much the same anyway, but one thing’s for sure: we did get seriously shitfaced. I hang up and try to open my eyes, but it’s too early. I even forgot to roll down the shutters last night.

Downtown’s always like a set from The Walking Dead at this time of day. Main Street’s the only place with any sign of life. A couple of screaming kids on tricycles zigzag around bums in zombie costumes sifting through garbage cans. Otherwise, everything’s disturbingly empty. Buoy’s got it in his head to take a detour towards the White Rhino, cause he heard from someone that there was a major fucking battle at the club last night. I’d rather just get going to the pool, but I don’t feel like wandering around by myself, so I stick with Buoy.

As soon as we get there, you can tell that whoever told the story wasn’t kidding when they said it was a battle. There’s POLICE LINE: DO NOT CROSS tape strung around the trashed entrance, and they tried to sweep the broken window glass under the bushes, but the shards crunch loudly under my feet just the same. The walls and the fence are covered with bloodstains and there must’ve been a couple of bigger pools of blood on the concrete that got sprinkled with sand to soak them up. Buoy heard that the gypsies stabbed someone or the skinheads stabbed the gypsies, but whatever happened is still unclear because there was a massive crowd, and Buoy’s homie who watched the whole thing go down couldn’t see much through the mob. In any case, it’s all really fuzzy.

There’s blood and hair stuck to the jagged glass sticking out from the window frame. I’m lost in space for a second and can’t see anything else except a dark strand of hair quivering in the draft. Buoy’s voice makes me snap out of it.

“This was real hardcore,” he establishes with satisfaction. “Lucky we left early,” he adds.

So that means we were at the club too. I wanna ask if I was with them, but if I was, Buoy’s gonna think I’m a total retard, so I keep my mouth shut and stare at the smashed door instead. I’m not sure what facial expression should match this moment, cause standing around on the empty street like this kinda weakens the whole horrifying effect. Still, it’s hard to disassociate from the fact that someone’s head was shoved through the window here. And if the glass looks like this, imagine what’s left of that poor guy’s head. Buoy studies the scene a while longer, then I manage with some effort to drag him away, and we head off to the spa. We weave our way through the cars parked in front of the White Rhino. There’s a smudged streak of blood gleaming on the trunk of a white Mazda. I’m no car freak, but I have this thing for Japanese cars. Knocked-out teeth lie on the ground, but they’re arranged so neatly that I’ll bet the news crew used them for cutaway shots.

We’re walking down the road. There’s no traffic at all. They cleaned my favourite graffiti off the high stone wall separating the music school from the jail that read: Prisoners of Music. It’ll have to get sprayed on again. Buoy’s talking a mile a minute, and sometimes it gets out of control, but I’ve realized that when he’s like this the best thing to do is act like Viggo Mortensen in that creepy sci-fi and just keep saying, uh-huh, and yeah. I don’t really care about the kids Buoy’s going off about, I don’t even know half of them by name, and he’s already said everything he knew about last night’s scuffle. We’re almost at the spa when he launches into some story about the Cloister Street Thai Massage Parlour and happy endings, but before I can get him to tell me more details, a water polo girl slows down on her bike beside us. Grinning, Buoy starts complimenting her on the killer whale tattooed on her calf.

Twenty minutes later we’re soaking in the thermal basin, the water gurgling softly into the overflow drain. Wrinkly old crones with liver spots surround us in the water and by the poolside, as far as the eye can see. They remind me of wallowing hippos on Animal Planet. I’m watching Ducky, but he doesn’t notice me. His face’s all red from the hot water as he looks around with a bored expression for somebody to bang, but we got here a little early so there are no good chicks yet, just a bunch of grannies. Then again, it’s always Ducky’s mood and the situation that decide who he’s gonna screw.

Editorial Reviews

Praise for Dead Heat

"Dead Heat is steeped in nihilism and intoxication, frequent violence and brutality, a casual acceptance (and frequent occurrence) of sexual assault. One wants to believe it's over the top, but the novel's accepting tone casts everything in the cold light of verisimilitude ... whereas history is said to be written by the winners, coming-of-age fiction tends to be written by, or of, the losers (to steal a label from Stephen King's IT), the outsiders, the underdogs. In Dead Heat, the focal characters are the local elite: members of a champion swim team, popular at school, with several members of the group coming from wealthy families. The disturbing levels of brutality, and their complete lack of consequences, may simply be a reflection of the way it has always been for the stars of the teen world, and the world at large ... However you analyze it, Dead Heat is a valuable read, and has the feel of an important book. Consider this an opportunity, then, to brace yourself for what you will find between the covers."—Toronto Star

"This is a satire of the bleakest strain: there is scarcely a page that does not offend. And yet the result is utterly enthralling … As savage, reckless, and abhorrent as the world Totth delivers is, what's worse is how frighteningly real it all feels. Dead Heat is an undeniably uncomfortable novel, but so too is the truth it's trying to get at."—Quill and Quire, starred review

"Totth's novel and its translation from the Hungarian by Nagy both excel … in conveying the banality and numbness as its narrator proceeds through this parade of horrors.The juxtaposition of transgressive behavior with competitive sports recalls nothing quite so much as Jim Carroll's The Basketball Diaries. Like that book, the way in which this narrative is told makes for compelling reading even as the acts it describes can inspire shudders.Totth's debut is a harrowing experience but also a frequently gripping one."—Kirkus

"[Dead Heat's] internal tension never calcifies into numbness or cynicism — it never gets tiresome, but remains white-hot to the end ... The novel’s effect is cumulative rather than linear, and part of the story’s absorbing quality is how lurchingly unpredictable it is."—Michigan Daily

“Let’s say it up front: reading Dead Heat, the Hungarian writer Benedek Totth’s first novel, is a shock . . . [like] the cry of love and desperation flung out by a generation that’s finished before it can begin, before it can even reach maturity.”—Yann Perreau, Les Inrockuptibles

“A brilliant novel, but brilliant like a black diamond and cursed so that you don’t want to hold it, a tale that never lets you go, no matter how much repugnance you may feel.”—Encre Noire

“Intense, brutal and relentless. As on a mad merry-go-round, you’re delighted not to be able to get off before it’s over. But watch out: the harsh form and subject matter will leave more modest readers shaken.”—TéléStar

Dead Heat is about an empty world . . . its language full of slang, its elocution prizing sexuality, violence and luxury goods. Its hallucinatory moments call to mind classics of 20th-century American literature like Bret Easton Ellis, Raymond Carver or Hunter S. Thompson, or the cult movie Trainspotting and the violence of youth at its centre reminds us of Golding’s Lord of the Flies.”—Magyar Narancs

"A savage world where teenagers roam like zombies high on drugs . . . a whirling sequence of fast-paced movie scenes, sharp dialogues and luxuriant visions.”—Szépirodalmi Figyelo

Dead Heat is a no-holds-barred portrait of adolescents adrift . . . The blue waters of the Danube have never looked this troubled.”—Paris Match

“Benedek Totth darkens his pages with a boundless talent. He writes like a man screaming, moved by furious desperation. Totth’s dialogues show that he understands the power of humour, and he also knows that the world moves too fast and leaves those who don’t know how to swim at the edge of the pool. A devastating, beautiful Noir novel.”—L’Express (Paris)