Enemies of the People

My Family's Journey to America

By: Kati Marton

Narrated by: Laural Merlington

Award-winning journalist Kati Marton set out on a wrenching personal journey to uncover the truth about her parents during her childhood in Cold War Budapest. She exposes the cruel mechanics of the communist state using the secret police files on her parents as well as dozens of interviews that reveal how her family was spied on and betrayed by friends, colleagues, and even their children's babysitter. She learned details of her parents' love affairs and the full nightmare of her parents' incarceration in a communist prison.

Marton relates her own eyewitness account of her mother's and father's arrests and the terrible separation that followed. There were things she didn't want to know about and disappointments she didn't want to revisit. But as she dug deeper into their lives, she found the truth about her parents' lives - and her own.

©2009 Kati Marton (P)2009 Tantor

Critic reviews

"A true story that is deeply moving and altogether amazing. It is a mystery story, a love story, and a walk through history." (Barbara Walters)

"Marton's story...is one of bravery, suffering, survival and vindication. She tells it in straightforward, lucid prose...and with her emotions well under control." ( The Washington Post)

"A powerful and absolutely absorbing narrative." ( The New York Times)

Couldn't stop listening

I could not stop listening to this book, in which I learned so much about the history of Hungary the country and the fate of the people, in addition to the family's story. The only reason this isn't a five-star rating is that the narrator, who does beautifully in English, and catches the emotion of the story, mispronounces almost every word that is in a foreign language, mostly German or French (I can't judge her Hungarian pronunciation). Sadly,this is a disservice to the work, especially as it portrays types of people who were accustomed to speaking and working in multiple languages.

Massacres Hungarian.

I found the story very compelling. My husband comes from Hungary and his family belonged to the old upper middle class that Marton describes so well in this memoir. However, the narrator manages to mispronounce every Hungarian word and name in the text, and there are a lot of them. I realize that Hungarian is not an easy language to pronounce, but I wish the narrator had take the trouble to learn how to pronounce some of the words correctly. Not exactly a great listen.

Spell-binding Story

I sat in the parking lot, late for a meeting, to listen to just a few more pages. I was entranced by the heroism and history.

would be better in print format

hard to follow in audible format because the author goes back and forth between first-person and quoting documents. It is difficult to tell who is speaking.

displeasing monotone

This title is tiresome throughout. It could probably be condensed into an hour of boring monologue. I'm not sure how the subject could be more interesting, but a change of narrator might help. I wouldn't waste money on this title. Once you've heard the sample, you've heard what will be the consistent tone of the entire tale.