Bernhard Fetz called Nádas's book, which was published in Hungarian in 2005 but only recently translated into German, "a novel full of empathy and chaos".
The 1,724 page tome is "a panorama of the 20th century marked by unimaginable violence done to the individual, and market by social, political and mental upheavals that are too large to be processed with the means of everyday perception", he added.
?Nádas teaches to read to see not only the surface phenomena such as nationalism or far-right extremism or ruthlessness in dealing with each other, but also the long-term influences behind them. Thus Parallel Stories becomes a mental biography of Central Europe in the 20th century.?
The author started Parallel Stories in 1985, but made many changes to the structure, such as after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, and in 1993, after suffering a heart attack.
The book was translated by Christina Viragh, who was born in Hungary but moved to Switzerland with her family as a young girl. The task took her six years and gave the book ?a second life?, said Fetz.
Source: Hungarian News Agency (MTI)
