Fire and Knowledge

Összefoglaló

Since English-language audiences were introduced to the works of Hungarian novelist Nádas (A Book of Memories, English translation, 1997) a decade ago, the author has quickly been canonized as a latter-day Eastern European Proust or Mann for his prewar-modernist structure and detailed attention to his characters' internal conflicts. Here Nádas provides a collection of brief writings—fiction and nonfiction—appearing over four decades of personal and political change. At the core of this selection are a handful of long short stories that meditate, grimly yet with a certain warmth, on serious matters: "The Lamb" considers Hungarian anti-Semitism; "Lady Klara's House," the persistence of class and its challenges to intimacy in postwar Communist society. Nádas' nonfiction chapters are similarly revealing and no less abstract, yet occasionally more illuminating into Nádas himself and on the craft of writing: "Vivisection," for example, explores the temptation to deceive when painting a nude with words; and a chapter on the (unfortunate) editing of Mann's published diaries sheds particular light on the author's influences. This gently chaotic and revealing scrapbook is a must-have for serious European literature collections.