Overview
The year 1993. Janos Dragomán, a wandering scholar, a world-famous and world-weary Hungarian writer, returns to his native town to visit three old friends. They are Aba Kuno, the almost saintly, highly respected rector of the university; Antal Tombor, the charismatic popular showman-mayor; and Kobra, a stable family man who is also a ubiquitous media pundit dispensing "common sense." The three have wives, all eager to be seduced by Dragomán, whose reputation precedes him. Through a series of flashbacks, covering his intellectually and sexually precocious schooldays, his memories of the life of Jews in 1944, and the 1956 Revolution (brilliantly rendered), we learn that Dragomán inadvertently caused the massacre of six young colleagues. Through the turbulent history of a Central European country, Konrád explores familiar themes and delivers a universal, appropriately ambiguous, message.
Synopsis
A rich, beautifully told novel set in post-socialist Hungary from the internationally renowned author of The Case Worker.
The year 1993. Janos Dragoman, a wandering scholar, a world-famous and world-weary Hungarian writer, returns to his native town to visit three old friends. They are Aba Kuno, the almost saintly, highly respected rector of the university; Antal Tombor, the charismatic popular showman-mayor; and Kobra, a stable family man who is also a ubiquitous media pundit dispensing "common sense." The three have wives, all eager to be seduced by Dragoman, whose reputation precedes him. Through a series of flashbacks, covering his intellectually and sexually precocious schooldays, his memories of the life of Jews in 1944, and the 1956 Revolution (brilliantly rendered), we learn that Dragoman inadvertently caused the massacre of six young colleagues.
Through the turbulent history of a Central European country, Konrad explores familiar themes and delivers a universal, appropriately ambiguous, message.
About the Author:
George Konrad, born in 1933, is Hungary's preeminent essayist and novelist. He served as president of International PEN from 1990 to 1993. In 1991 he won the prestigious Peace Prize of the German Book Trade. He is president of the Academy of Art in Berlin.
Publishers Weekly
Konr d--a past president of International PEN known for his 1970s-era novels criticizing the authoritarianism of Hungary's communism--sets his latest book in 1993, four years after the old regime has been swept away. J nos Dragom n, a famous author similar in some ways to Konr d himself, returns to Kandor, Hungary, a fictional city very much like Budapest. The mayor of Kandor, filmmaker Antal Tombor, is an old friend; the mayor's wife is Dragom n's lover; and his top aide, Sandra, is the wife of the rector of the university, Kuno Aba, who expounds a reactionary blend of politics. These are the relationships that, eventually, set the sometimes lyrical but flawed narrative in motion. Slipping between first- and third-person accounts of Dragom n's past and present, Konr d meanders for the first two-thirds of the book, providing historical background and information about his protagonist. We encounter Dragom n as a youth, with girlfriends; we wade through his bloated, egotistical portrayal of his later years; and we discover that Dragom n, a Jew, is keenly sensitive to the nuances of anti-Semitism. Then, its last third, the plot suddenly crystallizes: at a party that is being filmed by the mayor, Dragom n and Kuno get into an argument about an incident in the 1956 revolt. Dragom n pushes Kuno, sending him flying into a bench and killing him. Readers of Konr d's earlier novels might be interested in this lumbering work; others are advised to seek out those earlier publications instead. (May) Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.|