Volume 55, Number 12 · July 17, 2008
The Genius of Péter Nádas
By Deborah Eisenberg
Fire and Knowledge: Fiction and Essays
by Péter Nádas, translated from the Hungarian by Imre Goldstein
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 392 pp., $30.00
In countries where a state apparatus, by means of continuous and perceptible monitoring, threats, and reprisals, accords due respect to the power of language, it is hardly surprising that both readers and writers would take words and their uses seriously. And although it's certain, insofar as anything can be, that Péter Nádas would have become an extraordinary writer no matter what his circumstances, life in Hungary under a Soviet-backed regime has left a burning imprint on his writing.[*] His work's frank claims to be on a high level, its ambition, assurance, rigor, and tone of urgency, as well as the extent to which it sometimes makes free with the reader's stamina, not only suggest irrepressible artistic and moral force but also seem unburdened by personal arrogance. What is at issue for him, clearly, is to discover truth and tell it in whatever way possible.
Review, 5060 words
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