&#8220;The Dog adopted the Ancsas in the spring of &#8217;48&#8221;: so the story begins. The Ancsas are a middle-aged couple living on the outskirts of Budapest in a ruinous Hungary that is just beginning to wake up from the nightmare of World War II. The new Communist government promises to set things straight at least, and Mr. Ancsa, an engineer, is as eager to get to work building the future as he is to forget the past. (He and his wife lost their only son in the war.) The last thing he has time for is a little mongrel bitch, pregnant with her first litter. But Niki knows what she wants, and before long she is part of the Ancsa household. The Ancsas even take her along with them when Mr. Ancsa&#8217;s new job as director of a newly nationalized mine requires a move to an apartment in the city.<br><br>A political crackdown follows, and Mr. Ancsa is swept up in it &#8211;disappearing without a trace. For five years he does not return, five years of absence, silence, fear, and the constant struggle to survive. Mrs. Ancsa and Niki have only each other. It is this relationship, between the absent husband, the lonely wife, and the most ordinary of dogs, that lies at the heart of a book that turns the story of man&#8217;s inhumanity to man into a deeply poignant but entirely unsentimental parable about the endurance of love and the meaning of caring.