György Dragomán’s second novel, The White King, while being extremely popular with literary audiences, also gained considerable critical acclaim. The story of Djata, the young boy who has to grow up without his father in an unnamed Eastern European dictatorship has been translated to thirty languages due to its powerful images and complex, yet easily readable language, which works well with adolescents as well. Using close reading, the present paper focuses on the genre related dilemmas of the novel. The paper uses Paul de Man’s understanding of prosopopeia and the concept of dysfunctional synecdoche to argue that the genres of “father novel”, bildungsroman and dystopia are each other’s logical consequences and as such are intermingled in The White King.

György Dragomán’s second novel, The White King, while being extremely popular with literary audiences, also gained considerable critical acclaim. The story of Djata, the young boy who has to grow up without his father in an unnamed Eastern European dictatorship has been translated to thirty languages due to its powerful images and complex, yet easily readable language, which works well with adolescents as well. Using close reading, the present paper focuses on the genre related dilemmas of the novel. The paper uses Paul de Man’s understanding of prosopopeia and the concept of dysfunctional synecdoche to argue that the genres of “father novel”, bildungsroman and dystopia are each other’s logical consequences and as such are intermingled in The White King.