Where the Orphans of Power Die

As the town of Árokvár prepares for the visit of the Russian president, a teenage boy disappears from the local children's home. The authorities are eager to close the case, but the investigation leads to places where every step could prove fatal: the shadowy corridors of local power, the buried truth behind a forgotten tragedy from 1989, and a secret weapons program that, in the aftermath of the war in Ukraine, threatens to set all of Europe ablaze.

As the secrets of the past four decades become entwined with the present, three lifelong friends find themselves navigating increasingly dangerous territory: András, the trusted fixer for the town's powerful mayor; Feri, a Romani detective; and Lili, their former love, a successful researcher returning home from Vienna. They soon realise that the missing boy's disappearance is no ordinary investigation, but a political time bomb that those in power will stop at nothing to bury. Digging beneath the crimes suffocating their town, they discover that far more than the boy's life is at stake—they must also ask whether they themselves will survive once the shocking truth comes to light.

Where the Orphans of Power Die is both a gripping, emotionally charged drama and a ruthless political thriller. It holds up a mirror to a country where power ultimately leaves everyone orphaned. Brutally honest yet compulsively readable, it is an unflinching portrait of a nation where the past never lets go, lies have become institutionalised, and nothing is more dangerous than the search for the truth.

Where the Orphans of Power Die is the second novel by Vienna-based author Dávid Dorosz, whose debut novel was shortlisted for the Margó Literary Prize.

"This book is much more than a thriller—it's a portrait of an era, not only of today, but of the past forty years as a whole." — Janos Haasz, novelist and journalist at 444

"A little farther east, Dorosz would have fallen out of a window for writing this." — Adam Farkas, film producer

"Tough, fearless, impossible to put down." — Andras Muranyi, former editor-in-chief of Népszabadság