The Case Worker, a first novel by the young Hungarian writer George Konrád, has been widely praised in the West…. The Case Worker is horrific, and Konrád possesses both the power to see and the power to describe what he sees. But there is much to make reservations about: his violent, remorseless battering of the feelings causes monotony, his rhetorical seizures which spatter the reader with a hundred hot adjectives in a few sentences are, it seems to me, the easy but wrong way to the effect he wants….

What is memorable about the book is neither its narrative structure nor its tirades: Konrád's real achievement is, in fact, his evoking of a "case," the brilliant, economical creation of a character in a trap. He is a very talented writer, but The Case Worker is the sort of abreacting, subjective novel which does not yet...