Novel question

I am going nuts and can't go to sleep because I cannot recall the name of a novel.

I remember this much: The author is from eastern Europe. Maybe Hungaria, or Romania. It was translated into Swedish in the 80's, but I don't know when it was originally published.

A man travels to a place he thinks is some particular city (Helsinki?), but by and by he finds out that he has ended up in a country where he simply can't understand the human beings around him. He can't understand their language, and most of their activities seem unintelligible and bureaucratic. As I recall it, the protagonist is a linguist, or a person familiar with many languages, so there is a lot of discussion about what the strange language may be. He finds no clues whatsoever. He hooks up with a woman, a cleaner (I think) to whom he forms some kind of attachment, and the novel deals with his attempts to make himself understood by her and by others. With poor results.

The picture of language and understanding presented in the book made me think of Quine and his thought experiment of "gavagai" - the book shared with Quine a certain idea as to what is the most "primitive" or "primary" form of language (namely, "experience-based language").

As such, the novel was not particularly well written, and the story was sometimes quite contrived and I felt that the descriptions of the persons were often quite artificial. I also felt the novel to be a quite crude attempt at an allegory of communism, but what was interesting about it was its depiction of language and understanding.

The name of the book is a complicated, made-up word. With a z or an x in it, perhaps.
And yes, I did try Google, but didn't find anything there either.

Anyone?