"Café Europa"

Ed Ifkovic taught literature and creative writing at a community college in Connecticut for more than three decades and now devotes himself to writing fiction.

He applied the Page 69 Test to his new book, Café Europa, the sixth Edna Ferber mystery, and reported the following:

“And today we are the artists that so many in Budapest despise. The avant-garde.”

On page 69 of Café Europa, my amateur sleuth Edna Ferber, vacationing in Budapest in 1914, encounters not only heinous murder but also two young Hungarian artists: Bertalan Por and Lajos Tihanyi. These two real-life painters become important characters in my mystery, and on page 69 there is a brief discussion of their role in revolutionizing the stagnating Austro-Hungarian Empire culture. On the eve of World War One, Hungary, like much of Europe, was caught between the old fussy aristocratic world of Franz Joseph and the burgeoning revolutionary spirit seeping into the culture. On page 69 Tihanyi and Por engage Edna Ferber in a brief conversation about the avant-garde, a democratic sensibility that seeks to reinvigorate the moribund status quo, and so the page serves as a signpost to the coming upheaval in European life: catastrophic world war and the end of failed empire. The page also allows us to see the joy that Edna has in being in the company of such dynamic, lively Hungarian characters, two charismatic souls who will, in fact, help her solve the murder.

Visit Ed Ifkovic's website.

Writers Read: Ed Ifkovic.

My Book, The Movie: Café Europa.

--Marshal Zeringue