"On his way to a linguists' conference in Helsinki. Budai finds himself in a strange city where he can't understand a word anyone says." "One claustrophobic day blurs into another as he desperately struggles to survive in this vastly overpopulated metropolis where there are as many languages as there are people. Fearing that his wife will have given him up for dead, he finds comfort in an unconventional relationship with the elevator-operator in the hotel." "A suspenseful and haunting Hungarian classic and a vision of hell unlike any other imagined."--Jacket.