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Hale had always felt life was miscast. Other people seemed born for leading roles. They assembled shelves without incident, managed parking meters on the first try, and updated their phones without wiping out every photograph of their children - often one-handed, sometimes while doing several other things at once. Hale, by contrast, approached even a coffee machine with the caution of a bomb-disposal expert. Still, expectations applied to him as well. A husband should know how to fix things. A father should stay calm in emergencies. A grown man should be able to call customer service without getting drenched in sweat. Hale, however, struggled with nearly everything. Mostly himself, to put it mildly. Had anyone asked him to describe his defining characteristics, he probably would have listed cowardice, hypochondria, introversion, and in certain situations such painful cluelessness that it bordered on talent. Fortunately, nobody ever asked. On paper he was a sort of writer - adapting novels, classics, crime fiction, horror, and tragedy for the stage - but in ordinary life he seemed more at home in smaller forms. Mysterious stomach pains. Sardonic interior monologues. Humiliating social encounters. And scenes that usually ended with an apology, occasionally directed at a machine. Yet people rarely judged him too harshly. Perhaps because beneath the anxiety, complaints, and awkwardness lay a sincere wish to do right. To be a good husband. A good father. A decent man - even if he managed it only partially, and seldom with much grace. Still, he drew a deep breath and gave it another try. Gábor Domokos (born 1972 in Budapest) is a Hungarian novelist and screenwriter. He studied Hungarian language and literature at Eötvös Loránd University and earned a law degree from Pázmány Péter Catholic University. His early literary work appeared in leading Hungarian journals; he has published three novels and a short story collection. Alongside his literary career, Domokos has written extensively for television and film, with close to 400 IMDb credits and contributions to many of Hungary's most successful television series. Martin Hale is his second work to appear in English translation, following The Con Company. Andrea B. Hellman is a native Hungarian speaker and literary translator. She earned her degree in English and American Studies from the University of Szeged and holds a doctorate in Language, Literacy, and Cultural Studies from Boston University. She is Professor of English at Missouri State University. Martin Hale is her eighth book-length translation from Hungarian.

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