A Dickensian comingofage tale about poverty sex World War I and the darker side of human nature as seen through the eyes of a lobby boy in a Budapest hotelTemptation is a rediscovered masterwork of twentiethcentury fiction a Dickensian tale of a young man coming of age in Budapest between the wars Illegitimate and unwanted Bela is packed off to the country to be looked after by a peasant woman the moment he is born She starves and bullies him and keeps him out of school He does his best to hold his own and eventually his mother brings him back to live with her in the city In thrall to his feckless father Mishka and living in a crowded tenement she works her fingers to the bone while Bela shares a room with a hardworking prostitute Finally Bela secures a job in a fancy hotel Though exhausted by endless work he is fascinated by the uppercrust world that his new job exposes him to soon he is embroiled with a rich damaged and dangerous woman The atmosphere of Budapest is increasingly poisoned by the appeal of fascism while Bela grows ever more aware of how power and money keep down the working classes In the end with all the odds still against him he musters the resolve to set sail for new future