STRICTLY FROM HUNGARY

Hungary and Hungarians are the subject of Mr. Farago's collection of stories which, he insists, are all true -- ""more or less"". It has been said that each country has a particular crime in the skilled perpetration of which it is virtually unequalled. Hungary's forte, according to the author, is what ""Americans, with misplaced solemnity, call the confidence game"". And most of the central characters in Farago's tales are to some degree -- formally or informally -- involved in the Magyar-perfected art of deception, in the grandest of styles. One segment of the book relates the rather gradiose involvement of the Hungarian government itself in a vast counterfeiting scheme which intended to flood the English fiscal market with devaluating pound notes. There is, of course, the story of Ignatius Timothy Trebitsch Lincoln who tried his darndest -- an offended Hungarian is the most dangerous of animals -- to wipe out the entire British fleet. A man known to have brought a little bit of Hungary with him wherever he went, Laszlo Herendi, is included among the notables, along with Molnar, the Price of Esterhazy, and Arpad Vas- Farago's editor in Budapest, who made William Randolph Hearst look like Pierre Salinger. The gay amorality of the Hungarian people is faithfully reproduced here with charm, eloquence and wit. Now if he can only get Zsa Zsa to talk about it on the Paar show...