The Hungarian girl trap is about Hungary. Like Belgium, Hungary is one of those European countries that people can name a few clichés but know little else: goulash, Communism, gypsies, a once great football team – what else?
Ray Dexter didn’t know. Bored and disillusioned with southern English life he moved to Budapest to live with a beautiful Hungarian girl. He thought it was a novel idea, but he found that a lot of other foreigners had had the same idea.
Part travelogue, part diary; by turns funny and furious or thoughtful and reflective, full of wild tales and peppered with historical and philosophical asides, The Hungarian Girl Trap is above a all human story of coping in a country that has leapt on to a capitalist bandwagon but forgot to tell some of the population.
Ray Dexter is a writer and teacher. He has written for The Times Educational Supplement and When Saturday Comes. This is his second book. He now lives in Miskolc, Eastern Hungary.
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By Ray Dexter
Jun 7, 2009
"THe Hungarian Girl Trap" I was particularly interested to read this book because I had traveled to Hungary in the past, and had visited several of the places the author describes. I was keen to read his thoughts on this fascinating country. And in doing so he gives us an insight into what modern day Hungary, and perhaps more interestingly, modern day Hungarians, are like, in a way that only someone who has actually lived and worked there can do. By turns a travelogue, diary and sociopolitical commentary "The Hungarian Girl Trap" (it is important to realise that this is not a trap FOR Hungarian girls) helps the insular Englishman to understand the mindset of a country that only recently joined us now in the EU, and was yet to do so in the year this book was set. It is also the story of the author's exploits in a shambolic international school and in jumping through the hoops required to marry in a country that still prizes bureaucracy. These experiences in... More > particular led to my laughing out loud once too often, and finding that my travelling companions kept pinching my copy to read it themselves. If I have a criticism it is that the author doesn't give much away about himself. As he says, about the manipulative efforts of a fellow teacher "He can only work on you if you tell him anything", and sometimes it would be good to know a bit more about what is going on in his head. As with Mil Millingtons' "Things my girlfriend and I have argued about" and Stephen Clarke's "A Year in the Merde", our Englishman abroad (both geographically and figuratively) ends up somewhat older and wiser for the experiences. And I wonder just how many other men end up in the Hungarian Girl Trap. Richard A Saunders (Amazon.co.uk)< Less
"Hungarian Girl Trap" This is a fascinating account of the author's attempt to teach science in an international school in Budapest which lacks certain resources (such as its own science lab). He finds himself in this situation having fallen, like most of his male colleagues, into the 'Hungarian girl trap' by falling in love with a beautiful Hungarian girl. I loved this book, and could hardly put it down. My only quibble would be that a bit more time could have been spent on copy editing. I hope there is going to be a sequel.
