The Book of Fathers provides an introduction to the last 300 years of Hungarian history and "an often affecting depiction of the way individuals must appear and disappear, alive for a few years and then lost entirely, even to their own descendants," Smiley said.
The novel follows twelve generations of the Csillag family who "like to write...can often envision the activities of the precursors, and...sometimes foresee the future."
"Every Csillag is active and busy, whether sinned against or sinning, but Vamos's steady progress through the dramas that engulf them renders The Book of Fathers contemplative rather than tragic. In fact, there is a comic element to the twists and turns of the plot - just when the reader thinks all is lost (or, at least, something essential is lost), it turns up again."
Smiley called The Book of Fathers "a serious novel that, while sometimes agonizing or even shocking, is never somber. Inevitably, its theme is that life goes on, and that every son is no less interesting than every father, that each generation's search for wisdom is different but no less important or dramatic than the previous generation's."
The Book of Fathers was published in the United States by Other Press in a translation by Peter Sherwood.
Source: Hungarian News Agency (MTI) / Photo: MTI
