Arguably the most significant modern Hungarian poet, Lajos Walder was born in 1913 and died in 1945 in the Gunskirchen concentration camp, on the day it was liberated by the Allied forces. Reading Walder is like reliving an era long gone and, at the same time, learning to see our own world with new eyes. For Lajos Walder's "message" speaks to us as directly today as it did to his contemporaries almost a century ago: "... that apart from thieves and murderers // there are also human beings." For the first time, Lajos Walder's complete plays – "Below Zero," "Vase of Pompeii," "Tyrtaeus" – are made available in English, superbly translated by the poet's daughter Agnes Walder.