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Siege 13

Tamas Dobozy

3.75 · Rating details · 274 ratings · 46 reviews

Winner of the 2012 Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize and finalist for the 2012 Governor General's Literary Award for English-Language Fiction

In December of 1944, the Red Army entered Budapest to begin one of the bloodiest sieges of the Second World War. By February, the siege was over, but its effects were to be felt for decades afterward.

Siege 13 is a collection of thir ...more

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Paperback, 339 pages

Published September 15th 2012 by Thomas Allen Publishers

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Governor-General's Shortlist 2012

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Jul 08, 2017 Ivan rated it it was amazing

Recommended to Ivan by: Gorgona Grim

Shelves: historical-fiction, short-story-collections

Despite 5 stars this isn't generally a type of book for re-read and few years back it was just a book, albeit a great one but lately as I dug through old memories I found parallels with my own experience of city in siege and how it affected my family, especially my father. Now it's more than a week since my father died and memories become even more vivid re-read seemed like natural option and I prefer to dig through the wounds while they are fresh than to reopen once they healed. It's a subtle b ...more

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Sep 08, 2014 Jill rated it really liked it

Tamas Dobozy has this unsettling way of articulating exactly what I'm thinking -- usually some half-formed thought about my own personal hangups or idiosyncrasies -- and he does it way too well to be unintentional. Not that I think he's writing directly for me -- rather that I think he is tapping into a zeitgeist, specifically a Canadian one, that few authors hit quite so subtly, quite so bravely.

After all, these stories are about sieges.

Physical ones; none more prevalent than the siege of Budap Tamas Dobozy has this unsettling way of articulating exactly what I'm thinking -- usually some half-formed thought about my own personal hangups or idiosyncrasies -- and he does it way too well to be unintentional. Not that I think he's writing directly for me -- rather that I think he is tapping into a zeitgeist, specifically a Canadian one, that few authors hit quite so subtly, quite so bravely.

After all, these stories are about sieges.

Physical ones; none more prevalent than the siege of Budapest in 1944, though the safe and horrifying walls of villas and zoos and emigre city clubs fill the pages. Personal ones; your family holding you in or holding you down, you holding yourself in to keep your family happy or at bay. Psychological ones. Emotional ones. I have never read a series of stories more claustrophobic, more trapped.

But through all of these are escape attempts: alcohol, sex, artifice. Doomsday devices. Love.

No one said they were good escape attempts.

But the hope of freedom, somehow, is enough, here. And it's not cheesy, or eye-roll-worthy, or frustrating, or even remotely obvious. It is hidden between intricately-constructed layers of quotidian drama spiked with surrealism, carefully slipped between sentences that alternate between terse and breathless. Some stories slip to the background ("The Miracles of Saint Marx") and others rush forward ("The Beautician," "The Atlas of B. Gorbe"), but they are all knife-diggers, and none describes the collection's sentiment better than the haunting "Sailor's Mouth":

"She thought it was just a question of erasing the maps," he said, "and she'd find herself once more in that place from which she'd started out. I mean when she'd started," he corrected himself, "before she'd discovered anything of the world." He came close to the glass to look at it with me. "It's beautiful," he said.

"It is," I replied. And it was, like some transcript of dreams, written days later, when all you remember is the faintest of traces, a world already gone before it registered. (64)

Beautiful indeed. ...more

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Nov 12, 2012 Steven Langdon rated it really liked it

Shelves: super

"Siege 13" has been awarded the 2012 Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize in Canada, underlining just how excellent this book of short stories is. Built around one of the many horrific events of World War Two -- the longterm blockade and starvation of Budapest as the Soviet Army drove westward -- this is not just a book about the viciousness of war, it is also a probing of how one harrowing experience can shape a country and its people throughout the years as the impact of a period of grim agony "Siege 13" has been awarded the 2012 Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize in Canada, underlining just how excellent this book of short stories is. Built around one of the many horrific events of World War Two -- the longterm blockade and starvation of Budapest as the Soviet Army drove westward -- this is not just a book about the viciousness of war, it is also a probing of how one harrowing experience can shape a country and its people throughout the years as the impact of a period of grim agony plays out among survivors and their children.

The thirteen stories that Tamas Dobozy writes are all darkened by the siege and its memories, though only two of them actually take place during the struggle itself ("The Animals of the Budapest Zoo, 1944-45" and "The Restoration of the Villa where Tibor Kalman Once Lived.") Other stories trace the closed-in characters of siege survivors (such as "Rosewood Queens," ) the survival skills that people were forced to develop (such as "The Beautician,") and the way that further generations were shaped by their parents' grief and pain (such as "The Selected Mug Shots of Famous Hungarian Assassins.")

It can, of course, easily be concluded that a book of stories about a grim episode in Hungarian history, no matter how horrific, would normally not resonate deeply in North America. So what makes "Siege 13" special is not so much its subject matter as the high quality of the writing.

The characters in these stories are indelible -- sharply etched and superbly presented. Short stories often lack the depth in characterization that a novel can develop over its full length. But Dobozy avoids that problem. Partly that is because the narrator is often a common thread in the stories, with a rueful personal perspective that ties much of the book together. Certain characters (such as Maria, one of the raped women from the siege) appear in several stories, struggling to come to terms with her victimization and her survival. Mostly, though, Dobozy's effectiveness rests on the pointed details with which he brings his characters alive -- right from Benedek Gorbe, "with his stubble, pants the size of garbage bags, half-smouldering cigars," in the first story, to Otto Kovacs, "looking indescribably old, worn out, broken, a tattered black overcoat hanging off his bony shoulders," in the last.

These character descriptions are just one part of the excellence of Dobozy's writing. The human relationships traced in such stories as "The Atlas of B. Gorbe" and "The Society of Friends" are complex and compelling. The analysis of betrayal and loyalty is intricate and multi-layered in "The Beautician," where a striving graduate student must decide whether to reveal an older man's ambivalent past, even as he is himself trying to sort out his changing ties with a young lover. There is even a wicked comic edge to such stories as "The Miracles of Saint Marx," where a labour camp escapee survives by discovering "Das Kapital" is nourishing to eat!

"Siege 13" is, in many ways, a symbol of the new world in which we live -- where genocide and destruction anywhere set off changes that echo across many countries and through the generations. In that sense, this book is brother to the Vietnam novels of Lam and Thuy, to the novels about Rwanda extermination, to the Boyden and Richler novels about war and its impact on aboriginal Canada and immigrant Montreal. What is striking about these short stories is the way they permit that harsh process to be perceived from so many angles and with such depth of feeling.

Thus "Siege 13" is a universal story, despite the intricate detail on the Budapest tragedy. It is about stubborn survival, not always very heroic, with huge human costs, sometimes accompanied by compromise, but enduring and ultimately powerful. ...more

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Aug 11, 2013 Teresa rated it it was amazing

Shelves: my-faves

The short story craft at its best. These interconnected stories explore the horrors of the fall of Budapest to the Red Army during WWII and the impacts of the resulting Hungarian diaspora on subsequent generations, a topic I am embarrassed to say I knew little about until this book. Dobozy presents this dark subject with great beauty through multiple character perspectives on the impossible choices humans must make in war times and the stories they tell themselves to survive. "The Beautician," t ...more

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Sep 19, 2018 Abby rated it really liked it

Shelves: four-star

This has a lot of emotional weight – all the stories were very textbook short story, in that they created a tiny, encapsulated emotional world and many of them ended in an epiphany. But – and there's always a but with me – I felt that first, there was too much similarity of theme and second, and more important, that there was a certain lack of compassion for his characters.

He creates sad people – people who know they're sad; people who don't and find out over the course of the story; people who This has a lot of emotional weight – all the stories were very textbook short story, in that they created a tiny, encapsulated emotional world and many of them ended in an epiphany. But – and there's always a but with me – I felt that first, there was too much similarity of theme and second, and more important, that there was a certain lack of compassion for his characters.

He creates sad people – people who know they're sad; people who don't and find out over the course of the story; people who write elaborate fictions to conceal the fact that they're sad from themselves and others. So what's the problem? You can write sad characters in sympathy, because you're a sad person, and you want to show that there's a little sadness and self-delusion in all of us, or you can write them as a voyeur, to peek into sad little lives as though through the windows of a dollhouse, or to show the reader that they aren't like the characters, to make the reader feel better, because they're not delusional in the way that a boy creating doomsday machines because he can't handle his parents' divorce is.

And it's true that a lot of them are about showing that a lot of self-conception is self-delusion, which is necessary – "It was nice for you, for a while, thinking differently about yourself?" Father Szent-Mihály asks in "The Miracles of Saint Marx," even though it was because of a lie he told. But there's always that sense that Dobozy doesn't feel it himself.

As to similarity of theme, Dobozy does very well writing stories that are about being an immigrant in a way that aren't explicitly about being an immigrant, even when the main characters are immigrants. What I mean is that feeling like you're the loose tooth in an otherwise perfect row (too smart; too dumb; just not the same; missing something; feeling displaced in what should be home) isn't a uniquely immigrant experience, though being an immigrant can exacerbate it, and Dobozy made me feel that intensely.

But all of them are about that or about the stories people tell about themselves or both, so the collection as a whole feels tonally monotone. Do we need all of these stories? At almost 350 pages, it's a fairly long collection and doesn't need padding. I'm not sorry I read all of them, but it does feel like a surfeit, especially since incidents seem to repeat across stories.

If you can ignore worries about his compassion, and if you spread your reading out a lot, though, it's very good. His prose is beautiful, and his insights into people's minds and relationships are cutting and real. I just wish there had been a little more selectivity, so that the discontent wouldn't have had time to brew and ferment. ...more

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Apr 30, 2013 Sheila rated it really liked it

An amazing collection of dysfunctional weirdness. What recurs throughout these harrowing stories are the ways in which people everywhere are subjected to terrible actions and, if they survive, struggle to find a way to forget, remember, and/or integrate the things they've experienced, seen done to others, or done themselves. How they've been forced to make decisions none of us should have to make.

It's a brutally honest collection about the ways we create a narrative that will sustain us - whethe ...more

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Nov 11, 2013 Claire rated it it was amazing

Siege 13, by Tamas Dobozy, is a highly intelligent and carefully crafted collection of stories about the elusive nature of truth as it applies to human experience. The final paragraph of “Days of Orphans and Strangers” is about as close to a perfect ending as you’ll find in a story. This is a very fine collection.

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Dec 05, 2012 Thing Two rated it really liked it

Shelves: country-canada, rogers-writers-trust-fiction-award, country-hungary, history-wwii

This collection of thirteen stories revolve around the siege of Hungary at the end of WW2. Some deal with childhood recollections, some with dealing with the trauma in relatives, and some with the actual events as they were happening. It's not light topic, but the writing is excellent.

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Mar 08, 2017 Skjam! rated it liked it · review of another edition

Recommends it for: Those wanting to know more about the Hungarian experience.

Recommended to Skjam! by: Milkweed Editions

Shelves: published-2011-2020, beat-the-backlist, anthologies, europe, military-and-war, author-d

During World War Two, Hungary was one of the Axis powers, with its own fascists led by the Arrow Cross Party. At first this seemed like a good idea, as Hungary gained back territories it had lost after the breakup of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. But late in the war, it became obvious that they were on the losing side. The Hungarian government tried to broker a separate armistice with the Soviet Union, only to have their country occupied by the Germans. As a result, they were forced to fight to t ...more

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Aug 13, 2018 Cole Whetstone rated it really liked it

Unity: Atrocities are atrocious because they take on lives of their own, and affect whole generations — not just individuals. In this way, the Siege of Budapest and the following Soviet occupation affected the lives of every one of Dobozy’s character, and indeed, the lives of most Hungarians. The only meaning left to those who suffered was the meaning inherent in suffering itself.

3 Prompts:
1. How did the Siege of Budapest affect 2nd generation Hungarian immigrants? The siege brought on a persis ...more

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Aug 09, 2017 1.1 rated it really liked it

13 well-written stories woven through with the themes and fallout of the siege of Budapest, detailing the victims, opportunists, and villains. It's a brutal read at times, hilarious at others, and often veers into thoughtful and sorrowful modes. I loved all the stories, started catching the connections towards the end, and thought I'd definitely like to read this again sometime just to follow the allusions better.

It's a fine collection of rich short fiction that swirls around an overlooked histo ...more

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Jul 24, 2017 Eric Leeson rated it liked it

Treading on the border between fantasy and reality some of these stories are hard to believe. The scars, both visible and buried beneath the skin are life long, the march of the Red Army after World War II left behind it an important legacy that is fading into oblivion as the victims have mainly kept silent of their experiences. A very good novel, reads like a collection of short stories that are interrelated.

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Oct 04, 2019 Kate McDougall Sackler rated it liked it

Shelves: lending-library, number-reading-challenge

Beautiful writing that transports you into the story is the highlight of this collection of tales of the 1944 Budapest siege. Bogged down in the middle by a bit too much Rape, death, and the downtrodden, it picks up with an uplifting story by the end. These are stories about war, the fallout of war, and how war affects everything and everyone it touches, even through multiple generations. Points off for the weird cover art.
Number reading challenge: 13

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Jun 07, 2017 Joebacca rated it did not like it

Shelves: cannot-finish

no dice. cannot read this

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Dec 25, 2012 Steven Buechler rated it it was amazing

Books that deal with identity always make for powerful literature. Dobozy's collection of short stories show how a group of people went from the conflict of Budapest at the end of the Second World War,the occupation by the Red Army, up to immigranting to a new land, and - in some cases - the problems faced by their offspring. A well-written and well thoughtout read.

Page 66 - "The Restoration of the Villa"
It was the end of December 1944, and that night, running from the makeshift encampment and Books that deal with identity always make for powerful literature. Dobozy's collection of short stories show how a group of people went from the conflict of Budapest at the end of the Second World War,the occupation by the Red Army, up to immigranting to a new land, and - in some cases - the problems faced by their offspring. A well-written and well thoughtout read.

Page 66 - "The Restoration of the Villa"
It was the end of December 1944, and that night, running from the makeshift encampment and its marshalling yard, running and running long after the military police had given up, not wanting to risk their own lives by following him east, Zoltan realized it was hopeless, there was a wall of refugees coming at him, and behind it, the Russian guns, already so loud he felt as if they were sounding beside hi ears. Budapest was streaming with people fleeing from the suburbs - Rakosplota, Pestszentlorinc, Soroksar, Matyasfold - because the Red Army had not only arrived at these places already and taken control, but was advancing on Budapest itself.
So Zoltan became part of the human tide flowing from one death trap to another during the siege, and the things he'd seen would live on, unspoken, beneath everything he was to think and say from that point forward. Civilians used as human shields by the Red Army. Nazis exploding bridges over the Danube while there were still families and soldiers streaming across. Men and women forced to carry ammunition across the frozen river to German soldiers stationed on Margit Island while Soviet bullets and shells and bombs rained around them. He saw child soldiers holding off two dozen Russians by running up and down the stairs of a devastated building, shooting from every window, making them think there were a dozen soldiers trapped inside. Young boys crashing in gliders while attempting to fly in supplies for the fascist armies of Hitler and Szalasi, the fields littered with broken fuselages and wings and pilots contorted in positions that seemed to Zoltan the war's alphabet - untranslatable into human terms. There was a broken gas main near Vermezo that for days shot flame through every crack and hole in the asphalt - blue, orange, yellow - dancing along the road as if fire alone were capable of celebrating what had become of Budapest.
He'd seen exhausted doctors trying to save patients froma burning hospital, carrying them into the snow only to realize they had nothing - not a blanket, a sheet, even a shirt - to keep them from freezing. He'd come across the most beautiful girl, eighteen or nineteen, in one of the ruined homes filled those too wounded to go on, staring up at him, whispering from the mass of bodies, injured, starving, gripped by typhus, and as he leaned in to hear what she wanted to say - "Shoot me, please shoot me." - he noticed that both her legs had been torn away. ...more

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Sep 19, 2012 Angela rated it it was ok

Shelves: 2012-award-winners, reviewed

This book is really well written but just to difficult (for me) to engage with it. All the stories are intertwined and centred around the awful awful siege of the city of Budapest. It's evident from this book that every Hungarian alive at that time in History must have been affected in a devastating way. Themes of survival, (and the accompanying survival guilt,) betrayal, revenge, cowardice, identity, despair, and a very dark humour are woven throughout. I don't need a book to "feel good" necess ...more

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Apr 27, 2013 Ted Parkinson rated it really liked it

This book is very well written with the stories intertwined thematically (others have already summarized that it is about, so I won't bother). Some characters appear in more than one story. I knew nothing about the siege of Budapest prior to reading this book and now I understand its sheer brutality. I did not like all the stories. I think some are a bit too abstract and, for example, Sailor's Mouth has a nice idea but the story itself is weak. I think The Beautician is an absolutely perfect sto ...more

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Jul 16, 2013 Susan rated it liked it

Shelves: historical-fiction

I was unable to read all 13 stories due to time constraints, plus I don’t think I’m cut out for short stories, though I was able to get the flavour of the book. It is very well written but I wanted the characters to be more fully fleshed out as they might have been in a full-length novel, and I found myself skimming for plot points instead. At that point I realized it was time to put the book down.

However, the story that will stay with me forever was “The Animals of the Budapest Zoo.” War storie ...more

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Dec 11, 2012 Rebecca Schwarz rated it liked it

Shelves: dnf

Although I didn't make it all the way through this collection, these are good stories and I'll definitely read more by this author. Just not right now. While I love reading about other experiences and cultures, this book reveals the problem with collections by single authors. After reading about half of it, I just can't maintain my interest in the Hungarian expatriate experience no matter how lovely each individual story might be. It's due back at the library, so I'll take a break and check it o ...more

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Apr 01, 2013 Serge rated it it was amazing

This grouping of 13 short stories, thematically linked to one another, includes how WWII affected its generation and then their children, even in other countries. Dobozy traverses a wide range exceptionally well. There is the brilliant "The Restoration of the Villa Where Tibor Kalman Once Lived", and the surprisingly dark, dark humour of "The Selected Mug Shots of Famous Hungarian Assassins". As an ensemble, the stories portray the intergenerational nightmare consequences of war, any war, with b ...more

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Aug 07, 2013 Carol rated it really liked it

I loved this haunting collection of short stories of the events of the Budapest Siege of 1944 and how it shaped the lives of this eclectic, damaged group of people. I was particularly moved by it as I read the collection during a stay in Budapest and while reading of their history in the absolutely chilling Terror Museum. This collection made me think hard about how I would react in those circumstances.

I particularly enjoyed The Beautician, The Animals of the Budapest Zoo and The Ghosts of Budap ...more

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May 09, 2014 Lee Thompson rated it it was amazing

A well-crafted, ambitious collection, easily among my favourite story collections read in the past five years (which is certainly due to the strong eastern European influence in Dobozy's fiction). Lots of intelligence at work here and just enough sense of play to keep me satisfied. Dobozy crafts his stories, considers every line and plot point carefully, so there may lack a touch of spontaneity (for those of us who love that) but it's all so well done that I can forgive that. Much recommended.

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Dec 13, 2012 Robert Campbell rated it really liked it

Shelves: reviewed

Siege 13, a collection of 13 short stories inspired by the ways the siege of Budapest by the Russians in December 1944 impacted the lives of the Hungarian people, won the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize in 2012. Part personal essay, part exploration of collective memory and identity maintenance, and part alternate world construction, these stories are above all else case studies of "the passing of trauma from one generation to the next" (p. 183).

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Jan 14, 2013 Doriana Bisegna rated it liked it

One thing is for sure: Tamas Dobozy can write! These amazing short stories are brilliant! I have no idea how he was able to write of so many different characters with so many different scenarios. It opened my eyes to the plight of the Hungarians after WWII and how their lives were affected even when they decided to immigrate. Very powerful collection and a voice I plan to read more of in the future. Oh and he's Canadian...just thought I'd throw that in there...

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May 05, 2016 Daniel Kukwa rated it liked it

Shelves: canadian-lit

As a Polish Canadian, I know the power that comes from the memory of war & Soviet oppression...which is why much of this book spoke so well to a part of my psyche. However, there were occasional stories that didn't make me feel much of anything, other than appreciation. I put it down to a matter of personal taste, but I wish this collection had more stories like its closing tale, involving dreams of a mythical doomsday weapon. I want that one in particular dramatized one day.

...more

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Nov 12, 2012 Lucinda rated it really liked it

Shelves: canada, contemporary-fiction

These are stories that all deal in some way with being haunted by the events of the Siege of Budapest at the end of WWII, and the Soviet occupation that followed. They are beautifully written with complexity and intelligence; i found myself thinking through elements of one story or another during my day. Warning though: they have a deep melancholy that seeps into your bones while reading.

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May 02, 2013 World Literature Today added it · review of another edition

"The rhythm of the series, here and elsewhere one of Dobozy’s most effective stylistic devices, is not only compelling but encapsulates the structure of the story as a whole." - Robert Murray Davis, University of Oklahoma

This book was reviewed in the May 2013 issue of World Literature Today. Read the full review by visiting our site: http://bit.ly/18gjc0G ...more

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May 19, 2013 Johanna rated it really liked it

A painful but powerful read. Painful because of the subject matter. I had little idea of the 19th Century history of Hungary despite knowing several Hungarians. Those that lived through the horror, like many of the generation of the time, have learned to suffer in silence. Powerful because of the mastery of the writing. This is a book I want to reread. And reread. Lyrical, creative, stunning.

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Sep 23, 2014 Shilpa rated it it was amazing

Tamas Dobozy’s characters are memorable. His writing is so colourful, amassed with literary nuances, and the vivid historical account and unparalleled stories continue to live in our minds long after the book takes a spot on some dusty bookshelf.

Full review at: sukasareads.com

@SukasaReads
@ShilpaRaikar

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Nov 10, 2014 Dan Lalande rated it really liked it

13 stories dealing with the emotional aftermath of the 1944 siege of Budapest. With the dry, ugly surrealism of Kosinki, Dobozy recounts the strange, desperate adventures suffered by the calamity's survivors and doggedly insists that they are darkly comic Emperors with no clothes, their decades-deep scars fresh and visible.

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About Tamas Dobozy

Tamas Dobozy

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Tamas Dobozy was born in Nanaimo, BC. After receiving his Ph.D. in English from the University of British Columbia, he taught at Memorial University. His work has been published in journals throughout North America, and in 1995 he won the annual subTerrain short fiction contest. When X Equals Marylou, his first collection of short fiction, was shortlisted for the Danuta Gleed Award. Tamas Dobozy n ...more