Rejtő Jenő: Vesztegzár a Grand Hotelben

Wow! Our home in Buenos Aires was full of popular cheap short novels by Hungarian humorist Rejtő Jenő, and I devoured them all. Times were bad in Budapest of the thirties, and the novels -  took him a week to write - allowed him to eat. 

I loved the story of a luftgescheft Jew who sold the French Foreign Legion cheap "military" equipment like black handbags that he bought in a fire sale. He describes the Legionnaires marching in formation in the desert holding the fashionable handbags and flowery parasols. Unforgettably funny. Now a theater in Budapest announces a play based on another of his cheap novels: Quarantine in the Grand Hotel. There is a contagious disease and the authorities close down the hotel, no one gets in nor out. The hotel is full of international shysters and crooks, an intrigue develops to steal the valuable Bananoxid patent. A musical. No one is what it appears to be. May be in November I can take off a weekend and return to enjoy my mythical Ur culture. Budapest, Vienna, Berlin are still living off the cultural produce of the Jews.