A Guest in my Own Country

Fülszöveg

"Emerging from the pen of a premier Hungarian intellectual, and spanning several turbulent decades, this vivid, unsentimental, candidly intimate memoir gives us an invaluable view of a complex history, and of a very Eastern European fate. An important, illuminating, and ultimately hopeful book."
—Eva Hoffman, author of Lost in Translation and After Such Knowledge
"A TRAGIC TALE followed by an advenmre, both recounted with irony and wit."
—Richard Sennett, author of The Culture of the New Capitalism
When George Konrád was eleven, he, his sister, and two cousins fled to Budapest from the Hungarian countryside the day before deportations swept through his hometown. Ultimately, they were the only Jewish children of the town to survive the Holocaust. A Guest i?i My Own Country recalls the life of one of Eastern Europe's most accomplished modern writers, from his survival during the final months of World War II to the beginnings of a remarkable career in letters and politics.... Tovább

Fülszöveg

"Emerging from the pen of a premier Hungarian intellectual, and spanning several turbulent decades, this vivid, unsentimental, candidly intimate memoir gives us an invaluable view of a complex history, and of a very Eastern European fate. An important, illuminating, and ultimately hopeful book."
—Eva Hoffman, author of Lost in Translation and After Such Knowledge
"A TRAGIC TALE followed by an advenmre, both recounted with irony and wit."
—Richard Sennett, author of The Culture of the New Capitalism
When George Konrád was eleven, he, his sister, and two cousins fled to Budapest from the Hungarian countryside the day before deportations swept through his hometown. Ultimately, they were the only Jewish children of the town to survive the Holocaust. A Guest i?i My Own Country recalls the life of one of Eastern Europe's most accomplished modern writers, from his survival during the final months of World War II to the beginnings of a remarkable career in letters and politics. Offering lively descriptions of both his private and public life in Budapest, New York, and Berlin, Konrád reflects on his role in the Hungarian Uprising, the notion of "internal emigration"—the fate of many writers who, like Konrád, refused to leave the Eastern Bloc under socialism—and other complexities of European identity. To read A Guest in My Own Countiy is to e.xperience the recent history of East-Central Europe from the inside.
"George KoNRÁd's revealing memoir documents an exemplary destiny of a Central European intellectual in the bleak years of the Holocaust and in the oppressive decades of communism, when he rejected the harsh and hypocritical rules of the one party system, becoming one of the well known 'dissidents' of his country. The integrity of a lucid and independent mind and the luminous courage of an exacting conscience were, in fact, stoically serving, in the end, the essential commimient to his only great passion: literature. His writing proves it again."
—Norman Manea, author of The Hooligan's Return: A Memoir; Professor at Bard College; recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship Award and the Prix Médicis Étranger.
GEORGE KONRÁD, a former president of International PEN and the Academy of Arts in Berlin, is the author of The Case Worker and The Invisible Voice, among many other widely translated books. He lives in Budapest.
JIM TUCKER, a classical philologist living in Budapest, translated works from German, French, and Italian before making the acquaintance of Air. Konrád, for whom he has translated some 35 essays from the Hungarian, in addition to works by numerous other authors.
MICHAEL HENRY HEIM, a professor of Slaviclanguages and literature at the Universit)' of California at Los Angeles, has translated works by Anton Chekhov, Milan Kundera, and Bohumil Hrabal, among others. Vissza