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Nadas, Peter (Translated by Ivan Sanders) : A Book Of Memories

Farrar, Straus & Giroux, New York City, NY, 1997

ISBN 0374115435

First Edition / First Printing. Fine in Fine Dust Jacket. 706 pages. The author's breakthrough second novel. One of the greatest novels of the 20th century. The first appearance of the title in English and in the United States. Precedes and should not be confused with all other subsequent editions. Published in a small and limited first print run as a hardcover original only. The First Edition is now scarce. Presents Peter Nadas' "Emlekiratok Konyve" in a felicitous English translation as "A Book of Memories". Inevitably, his masterpiece. A massive novel that has been compared to Marcel Proust's "In Search of Lost Time", it was championed by Susan Sontag, who arranged to have the novel translated into English and personally brought the author to the United States for the first time. "A novel within a novel. The outer shell of this ambitious tale concerns a nameless Hungarian writer and his menage a trois with an aging actress and a younger man in East Germany. While the contemporary writer's own story unfolds, he is busily at work on an historical novel about a German novelist named Thomas Thoenissen. As if a novel about a novelist writing about a novelist wasn't confusing enough, the two fictional writers have a great deal in common, including an unnatural affection for their mothers and a predilection for bisexual triangles. Moving in time between the old Stalinist era and post-communist Eastern Europe, Peter Nadas convincingly conveys the effects of Communism, both as it happened and as it collapsed. In his unnamed narrator, he creates a perfect conduit between two times; the narrator grew up in a privileged Communist family, the son of the state prosecutor in a Stalinist regime. In chronicling the boy's passage from child to man, Nadas paints a vivid portrait of the secrecy, fear, and tension in a society in which the personal and the political are often one and the same" (Publisher's blurb). "The greatest novel written in our time, and one of the great books of the century" (Susan Sontag). An absolute "must-have" title for Peter Nadas collectors. This title is a great book. This is one of few copies of the First American Edition/First Printing still available online and is in especially fine condition: Clean, crisp, and bright, a pristine beauty. Please note: Copies available online have serious flaws, are subsequent printings, or are remainder-marked. This is surely an accessible and lovely alternative. A scarce copy thus. Peter Nadas' "A Book of Memories" is widely regarded as one of the canonical works of our time. One of the greatest writers of our time. A fine copy. (SEE ALSO OTHER PETER NADAS TITLES IN OUR CATALOG). ISBN 0374115435.

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