The book is about an average Polish person, but could take place anywhere in Eastern Europe under communism, according to the author.
Bator wrote the book while in Japan, on scholarship.
?For me, that distance from the country of my birth was necessary to start writing, to see who I am, where I come from and what my roots are,? Bator said.
Bator, who teaches at university, said the story of Sandberg was born from its three generations of characters. All of the figures in the story are the product of pure imagination, she adds, though conceding that it is not difficult to find her own alter-ego in the character of Dominka.
Dominika is of the ?modern generation? in the book, growing up in a communist-era housing estate in the industrial city of Sandberg.
Bator said nostalgia, for her, meant first of all her childhood, not the political regime under which she grew up, but she acknowledged a desire to understand people who gave themselves over to the propaganda at the time.
Bator, who wrote Sandberg in nine months, said she regretted not having started writing earlier.
Sandberg was published in Hungarian by Magvető Kiadó. It was translated by Péter Hermann.
Sandberg was published in Germany before it was published in Hungary. It will soon appear in Macedonia and translations into Croatian and Hebrew are underway.
Bator has already completed a sequel to Sandberg.
Source: Hungarian News Agency (MTI)
