György Konrád

Het leven van enkele Hongaarse intellectuelen wordt beheerst door een driehoeksverhouding.

From the first of these essays to the last, we see how the initial euphoria at the end of Communist rule is tempered by the difficulties of reform.

"Janos Dragoman, a world-famous and world-weary Hungarian writer, returns to his native town of Kandor to visit three old friends. The three all have wives who are 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, we learn that Dragoman inadvertently caused the massacre of six young colleagues.". "That was the past. The present offers fresh opportunities. But the streets are old and the human beings blemished. Having publicly accused his friend Aba of falsifying his past, Dragoman causes his death. Intentionally or unintentionally?"--BOOK JACKET.

The daily routine of a man in charge of children at a state welfare organization and the demands that are made upon him are depicted in the novel set in present day Hungary.

"When George Konrad 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 in My Own Country recalls the life of one of Eastern Europe's most accomplished modern writers, beginning with his survival during the final months of World War II to the beginnings of a remarkable career in letters and politics. Offering descriptions of both his private and public life in Budapest, New York, and Berlin, Konrad reflects on his role in the Hungarian Uprising, the notion of "internal emigration" - the fate of many writers who, like Konrad, refused to leave the Eastern Bloc under socialism - and other complexities of European identity. To read A Guest in My Own Country is to experience the recent history of East-Central Europe from the inside."--BOOK JACKET.

"Written over the last two decades, the essays in this collection speak to what it means to be Jewish - historically, theologically, ideologically, philosophically - within the context of the Holocaust and the disintegration of Communism. George Konrad is Hungarian and Jewish. He is European and Jewish. A Diaspora Jew, he espouses Zionism, he tells us, as one who might, if he chooses, move to Jerusalem, just as he might, if he chooses, move to Paris." "Konrad covers much ground in The Invisible Voice, from German collective guilt to assimilation, from the Diaspora Jew to Israel and Palestine. He looks at European integration and how the Jews fit into it. Should they work toward assimilation or separation in order to survive? These are thoughtful and provocative essays from one of Europe's preeminent essayists and novelists."--BOOK JACKET.