A Book Of Memories - Softcover
Synopsis
First published in Hungary in 1986 after a five-year battle with censors, Péter Nádas's A Book of Memories is a modern classic, a multi-layered narrative that tells three parallel stories of love and betrayal. The first takes place in East Berlin in the 1970s and features an unnamed Hungarian writer ensnared in a love triangle with a young German and a famous aging actress. The second, composed by the writer, is the story of a late nineteenth century German aesthete whose experiences mirror his own. And the third voice is that of a friend from the writer's childhood, who brings his own unexpected bearing to the story. Compared by critics to Proust, Mann, and Joyce, this sensuous tour de force is "unquestionably a masterpiece" (The New Republic).
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Review
A Book of Memories is a novel within a novel. The outer shell of Hungarian author Peter Nadas's ambitious tale concerns a nameless Hungarian writer and his ménage ŕ trois with an aging actress and a younger man in East Germany. While the contemporary writer's own story unfolds, he is busily at work on an historical novel about a German novelist named Thomas Thoenissen. As if a novel about a novelist writing about a novelist wasn't confusing enough, the two fictional writers have a great deal in common, including an unnatural affection for their mothers and a predilection for bisexual triangles. Throw into this already heady brew a great deal of Eastern European cold-war politics, and it becomes obvious that A Book of Memories requires a serious commitment from the reader.
Moving in time between the old Stalinist era and post-communist Eastern Europe, Peter Nadas convincingly conveys the effects of communism, both as it happened and as it collapsed. In his unnamed narrator he creates a perfect conduit between two times; the narrator grew up in a privileged communist family, the son of the state prosecutor in a Stalinist regime. In chronicling the boy's passage from child to man, Nadas paints a vivid portrait of the secrecy, fear, and tension in a society in which the personal and the political are often one and the same.
About the Author
Péter Nádas is the author of the novels A Book of Memories, The End of a Family Story, and Love. He lives in Gombosszeg, in western Hungary.
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- PublisherVintage
- Publication date1998
- ISBN 10 0099766310
- ISBN 13 9780099766315
- BindingPaperback
- Number of pages720
- Rating
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Vintage Publishing, United Kingdom, London, 1998
ISBN 10: 0099766310
ISBN 13: 9780099766315
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Paperback. Condition: Very Good. A Book of Memories is made up of three first-person narratives: The first, that of a young Hungarian writer and his fated love for a German poet; we also learn of the narrator's adolescence in Budapest, when he experiences the downfall of his once upper-class but now pro-Communist family. A second memoir, alternating with the first, is a novel the narrator is composing about a refined Belle Epoque aesthete, whose anti-bourgeois transgressions seem like emotionally overcharged versions of the narrator's own experiences. A third voice is that of a childhood friend who, after the narrator's return to his homeland, offers an apparently more objective account of their friendship. Together these brilliantly coloured lives are integrated into a powerful work of tragic intensity. The book has been read, but is in excellent condition. Pages are intact and not marred by notes or highlighting. The spine remains undamaged. Seller Inventory # GOR001822497
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A Book Of Memories (Paperback)
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ISBN 10: 0099766310
ISBN 13: 9780099766315
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Paperback. Condition: new. Paperback. Acclaimed Hungarian novelist Peter Nadas weaves together three voices to blow the history of his country wide open.A Book of Memories is made up of three first-person narratives-The first, that of a young Hungarian writer and his fated love for a German poet; we also learn of the narrator's adolescence in Budapest, when he experiences the downfall of his once upper-class but now pro-Communist family.A second memoir, alternating with the first, is a novel the narrator is composing about a refined Belle Epoque aesthete, whose anti-bourgeois transgressions seem like emotionally overcharged versions of the narrator's own experiences.A third voice is that of a childhood friend who, after the narrator's return to his homeland, offers an apparently more objective account of their friendship.Together these brilliantly coloured lives are integrated into a powerful work of tragic intensity. A second memoir, alternating with the first, is a novel the narrator is composing about a refined Belle Epoque aesthete, whose anti-bourgeois transgressions seem like emotionally overcharged versions of the narrator's own experiences. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability. Seller Inventory # 9780099766315
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A Book of Memories
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