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.

Acclaimed Hungarian novelist Peter Nadas weaves together three voices to blow the history of his country wide open.

About the Author
Peter Nadas was born in Budapest in 1942. Among his works translated into English are the novels A Book of Memories, The End of a Family Story, Love and Parallel Stories; a collection of stories and essays, Fire and Knowledge and two pieces of short fiction, A Lovely Tale of Photography and Peter Nadas: Own Death. He lives with his wife in Gombosszeg, Hungary.

Reviews
Original and exhilarating work that demands to be read again * Sunday Times *
The greatest novel written in our time, one of the great books of the century -- Susan Sontag
One of the most important novels of our time * Times Literary Supplement *
The monumental event of recent Hungarian history, the fated uprising of 1956, is accounted for in the most affecting manner imaginable in these haunted pages * Daily Telegraph *
What makes this Book of Memories so memorable is the sheer quality of the prose, its subtlety and intelligence, which shines through what seems an elegant and unobtrusively American translation * The Times *



Book Information
ISBN 9780099766315
Author Peter Nadas
Format Paperback
Page Count 720
Imprint Vintage
Publisher Vintage Publishing
Weight(grams) 517g
Dimensions(mm) 198mm * 129mm * 36mm