Under the Frog is a novel about the oppression and evils of totalitarianism.
The book tracks the exploits of Pataki and Gyuri, members of Hungary`s elite National Basketball team from the end of WW II to and through the Hungarian Uprising against the Soviet Union in the mid 1950`s.

Ostensibly railway workers, the team travels the country, usually buck naked, in a specially constructed rail car, playing basketball, chasing girls and generally avoiding anything that looks like work while desperately striving to maintain their team membership, the only thing that keeps them from experiencing first hand the blight and depression that marks the plight of the common man in post war Hungary.

Biting, satirical, often hysterically funny, the book nevertheless searingly conveys the sense of deprivation and repression that gave rise to the uprising as well as the brutality and viciousness with which it was put down.

Fischer`s international reputation was built on this novel, and deservedly so. It was one of the great novels of the Cold War era.

A brilliant, haunting, truly memorable book.