No Matter Where I am, I See the Danube: Autobiography

Born to a prosperous family in 1930s Hungary, Dr Tom KABDEBO was a schoolboy in the post-war Stalin years when ten percent of Hungarian men (including his father and uncle) were sentenced to prison and to the loss of all possessions. To pay for his education, and to help support his stepmother and siblings, he worked at labouring jobs, including underground in a coal mine where the temperature was 40 C. In 1956, as a student in Budapest, he took part in the Hungarian Revolution - his diary of those few extraordinary days is reproduced in this book. Because of his involvement, he had to flee the country, along with 200,000 others. The book includes a Foreword by Arpad Goncz, President of Hungary 1990-2000, in which he writes of the author: ‘He was rendered cosmopolitan by Hungarian history. His homeland was twice trodden by occupying armies, and as a consequence hundreds of thousands of its people were forced to flee their country, making their living elsewhere in the world. They were scholars, physical workers, artists, or, as it happens: writers, like Kabdebo, who had moved around the world, before finding Ireland, his real second home. Ireland is a watchtower, wherefrom he could, perhaps, see his country more sharply than from nearby.