Tibor Fischer's 'Under The Frog'

An unforgettable sketch of a Jesuit spy for God

Shortly after arriving in Budapest, I met a British-Hungarian novelist, Tibor Fischer, at a party. I looked up his writing afterward, and saw that his 1993 novel Under The Frog had been widely acclaimed. “Under the frog” is a Hungarian saying to indicate being in a very low place. It’s a novel about young men in Budapest in the decade between the end of…