Mind Twisters [antikvár]

TRANSLATOR'S NOTES Three years ago I did not know Dr. Ernest Tottosy. I still have not met him in person and yet, it seems like I have always known him. Through the moving account of his prison ordeal, going with him into the deep abyss of madness and back again - he became a brother. Granted, we came from the same kind of background, yet there is more to this feeling of kinship than mere circumstances. His beautiful soul gives life to the story; while reading the book we are with him and get to know him intimately. This was much more so when, in the process of translating the manuscript, I had to relive the events with him in order to portray them accurately. I had a tremendous helper in this task: my daughter-in-law, Marcey Painter Szablya. She went through every word and scrutinized every sentence with the precision of a playwright. As an American she became acquainted with the sad fate of Hungary through our son, János, who had escaped with us as a two and a half year old. Marcey and I had just completed the researching, writing and the production of the oral history drama, "Hungary Remembered," about the Hungárián Revolution of 1956. "Mind Twisters" was one of the more than a hundred stories used in this oral history drama. Marcey had the perfect background to do the editorial revisions for "Mind Twisters." Next I would like to thank Dominique Mary (Niki) Szablya, my youngest daughter, and Marguerite Perner, two beautiful young people, who entered all the corrections into the word processor, while adding their own observations. Last, but not least, we owe a debt of gratitude to Caroline Berry for doing the last tedious proofreading of the manuscript. I sincerely hope that all the readers will appreciate this book as much as we did while we put our best efforts into making this important document available to the English-speaking public.