Novel
A Book of Memories
Emlékiratok könyve
Péter Nádas · 1986
Synopsis
A Hungarian writer stays in East Berlin in the seventies; there he has an affair with the actress Thea and falls passionately for the poet Melchior. He looks back on his youth in the Budapest of the fifties, beside a Communist father, a state prosecutor. At the same time, he is writing the novel of a certain Thomas, in a Germany at the turn of the century, whose narrative becomes entangled with his own. A childhood friend, met again years later, gives a completely different version of their shared past.
Context
Its author worked on it for more than ten years, and the book appeared in Budapest only in 1986, from Szépirodalmi, after difficulties with the censors; revised editions followed in 1994 and 1998. It takes up in its own way Proust's associative memory and speaks frankly of desire between men. The English translation appeared in 1997, and Susan Sontag saw in it “the greatest novel of our time”; the French translation by Georges Kassai, published by Plon in 1998, received the prix du Meilleur Livre étranger.
Who it is for
A very long novel, in which one must accept for a long time not knowing who is speaking; translated into French and English.
Prizes and reception
The book that brought its author to the first rank internationally, and the first of his major novels.
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