The End of a Family Story - Tapa dura

The End of a Family Story, written before A Book of Memories, is set in Hungary in the 1950s, when Stalinist has reduced the populace to silence and deception. An old man, refusing to submit to these implacable realities, flees to his memories of the past, in which he believes he can still find redemption. For his grandson, he invents a fantastic tapestry of stories, a family saga, a fabulous world of myths and legends. That is one family story. Another, more urgent and immediate, is engaging both the storyteller and the boy. The authorities condemn as a traitor the son of one and father of the other, and then they come searching for the boy, who is the narrator of this extraordinary fiction. But the boy has been liberated into sincerity and freedom by his grandfather's stories, and he feels himself empowered to give dark and passionate testimony to the alienation, treason, sexual energies, and complex truth-telling of the adult world that confronts him. Finally he begins to understand how other kinds of family stories will end. Myth, history, and political realities are wonderfully synthesized in this inspired, radiantly beautiful novel by one of the greatest living writers.

Peter Nadas was born in Budapest in 1942. This novel, written before his celebrated A Book of Memories, has been translated into twelve languages. He lives in the village of Gombosszeg, Hungary.