Synopses & Reviews
The magnum opus of one one of Europe's greatest living writers.
"Instead of a chronicle, a person tends to manufacture legends when he relates the story of his life for others," Péter Nádas writes in his fiction masterpiece, Parallel Stories. Now, in his own memoir, the renowned author investigates what it might mean to reconstruct a life without recourse to the techniques and embellishments of traditional storytelling.
Taking his firmly imbedded memories — the "illuminated details" that give this work its title — as his starting point, N das dissects their contents using a method inspired by Freudian dream interpretation. Sounds, scenes, smells, feelings — all are probed for details that might allow him to reconstruct what happened, and when and where. In order to weed out conscious or unconscious distortions, he deconstructs the stories of others, too — moving in concentric circles toward causes and circumstances, until their meaning and significance come to light.
In a work that encompasses the tumultuous years of World War II and the Hungarian revolution, Nádas traces the hidden connections between the events of a life and assembles them into a memoir of unusual insight and exceptional power. Hailed by Deborah Eisenberg as an "extraordinary writer," Nádas has confirmed his place among Europe's greatest living authors.
Review
"A firework of memories, in which each spark unfolds in its own luminosity and, above all, triggers further memories...[A] masterpiece...[Nádas is] one of the greatest writers of our time." ― Andreas Platthaus, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
Review
"Péter Nádas is the great surveyor of 20th-century European mental landscapes...One moment he is breathtakingly microscopic, offering a feast of details and nuances, and the next moment he is epochal and essayistic...An unsurpassable work of art." ― Iris Radisch, Die Zeit
About the Author
Péter Nádas was born in Budapest in 1942. Among his works translated into English are the novels Parallel Stories, A Book of Memories, The End of a Family Story, and Love, as well as a collection of stories and essays, Fire and Knowledge; A Lovely Tale of Photography; and Péter Nádas: Own Death. He lives with his wife in Gombosszeg, in western Hungary.
Judith Sollosy is an editor and an academic and literary translator who is best known for her translations of the contemporary Hungarian authors Péter Esterházy, Mihály Kornis, Péter Nádas, and István Örkény. Her own writings on translation have appeared in PEN America, Asymptote, and Words Without Borders, among other publications.