A Book of Memories

ABOUT THE BOOK

This extraordinary magnum opus seems at first to be a confessional autobiographical novel, claiming and extending the legacy of Proust and Mann. But it is more: Péter Nádas has given us a brilliant psychological novel that comes to terms with the ghosts, corpses and repressed nightmares of Europe's recent past. It is made up of three narratives: the first is that of a young writer who describes his adolescence in Stalinist Hungary in the 1950s, his beloved father's suicide after the 1956 uprising, and his fated love for a German poet; the second is the narrator's own fictional character, a refined belle époque aesthete and revolutionary anarchist whose emotional experiences mirror the narrator's; and the last that of a childhood friend of the narrator who meets him in Moscow many years after their youth and who seems to offer a more objective account of their friendship. These brilliantly coloured lives, each of which casts light on the others, are interwoven to create a powerful work of tragic intensity. A Book of Memories is a radiant and unforgettable achievement.