Obsessed with 1956
Obsessed with 1956

Summary/Abstract: András Nagy: A Bang-Jensen ügy. ’56 nyugati ellENSZélben (The Bang-Jensen Affair: 1956 in a UN Westerly Headwind). Budapest, Magvetô, 2006, 399 pp. András Nagy has written an enigmatic and disturbing book about a chapter in Cold War diplomacy still uncompleted to this day. On Thanksgiving Day, 24 November 1959, two men walking through Alley Pond Park in New York discovered the body of a man shot through the temple. The dead man was the Danish diplomat Povl Bang-Jensen. Was it suicide? Was it murder? At first glance one might think Nagy’s book is a thriller employing a historian’s tools, but the mysteries by and large remain mysteries and there is no final revelation to bring relief to the reader. What is even more disconcerting is the language of the narrative, which operates with the tools of certitude, insinuation and ultimate perplexity—and masterfully at that. In places the reader is left gasping for just a small handhold, a sign that points in the direction of the truth—only to conclude that the truth is ultimately unknowable, as is made clear just about from the start.[...]

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