Fire and Knowledge: Fiction and Essays

Fire and Knowledge: Fiction and Essays

A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice The U.S. publication of A Book of Memories in 1997 introduced to our shores the work of an extraordinary novelist, Péter Nádas. Now, in Fire and Knowledge , a superb collection of short stories, essays, and literary criticism, we discover other aspects of Nádas's major presence in European life and letters: as a trenchant commentator on the events that have transformed Europe since 1989, as a stunning literary critic, and as a subtle interpreter of language and politics in societies both free and unfree. Here, in full, is a rich and rewarding compilation of brilliantly original, touching, witty, and thought-provoking works by one of our greatest living writers. “The stories are effortlessly wonderful. The essays are more chewy--what one imagines Milan Kundera might sound like before his first cup of coffee. . . . [Nádas] has Lawrence's symbolic facility without his thumping self-consciousness, and an endless tenderness for the detail of overlooked lives. . . . Every story here reminds us that fiction can tell the truth as well as nonfiction--or even better.” ― The New York Times Book Review “[Nádas] has quickly been canonized as a latter-day Eastern European Proust or Mann. . . . This gently chaotic and revealing scrapbook is a must-have for serious European literature collections.” ― Booklist “Highly recommended . . . Nádas gives readers page after page of thought-provoking and deeply insightful intellectual enjoyment as well as a soul-baring glimpse into his internal struggles with such issues as capital punishment, depression, writing, religion, and fate. . . . Readers will be drawn into the very private lives of his characters, investing themselves in their every word and deed.” ― Library Journal Péter Nádas was born in Budapest in 1942. Among his works translated into English are the novels Parallel Stories , A Book of Memories , The End of a Family Story , and Love , as well as a collection of stories and essays, Fire and Knowledge ; A Lovely Tale of Photography ; and Own Death . He lives with his wife in Gombosszeg, in western Hungary.