Daughter of the Revolution

October 23, 1956

For 12 days, countless Hungarian teenagers fought in the bloody Hungarian Revolution against Communist tyranny and overwhelming Soviet armor. They set up tank barricades, tossed Molotov cocktails, and with their confiscated Russian submachine guns made a stand on the streets of Budapest, hoping to hold out until help arrived from the West. But there was no help. Nobody came to their aid. This is the story of one such brave freedom fighter-a 14 year-old girl.

"For 12 days in 1956, the Hungarian people caught a fleeting glimpse of their independence. Armed with little more than a love of liberty, the impatient patriots of Hungary rose up against the mighty Soviet empire. They stormed the jails and they freed political prisoners. For 12 days, there was hope, but then came the response and it was terrible and ferocious. Soviet troops and tanks rumbled into Hungary, killing tens of thousands of people and condemning thousands of others to Siberian gulags."

Condoleezza Rice

U.S. Secretary of State

"We have only one way of being true to Hungary, and that is never to betray, among ourselves and everywhere, what the Hungarian heroes died for."

Albert Camus

"On the fiftieth anniversary of the Hungarian uprising, Peter Hargitai's newest novel, Daughter of the Revolution, captures the spirit of that time as it follows the Cheetah, a 14 year-old schoolgirl turned revolutionary who takes on the tanks and machine guns of the Soviet Red Army."

Richard A. Schwartz, author of Cold War Reference Guide, Cold War Culture, and a political novel, The Conflicted Liberal