The Last Window-Giraffe

Peter Zilahy’s The Last Window-Giraffe takes its title from the fact that the first and last letters of the Hungarian alphabet match the first letters for the words “window” and “giraffe.” This genre-defying book, originally written in Hungarian, has been translated into twenty-two languages and is often cited as one of the inspirations for the Orange Revolution in the Ukraine.

On the surface, this autobiographical fiction rendered by Zilahy’s incisive x-ray vision—a heady mix of history, memoir, and farce of the highest order—is about the protests in Belgrade in 1996. But viewed through a wider lens it serves up the absurdity of all manner of authoritarianism that resonates as much today as it first did upon publication in 1999.