"Péter Nádas is a master of physical descriptions." The New York Times

Photo: Jelenkor Kiadó, Bálint Pörneczi

„Péter Nádas is a master of physical descriptions.”

The New York Times

Open Book Award A néma tartomány (The Mute Realm), the first volume of Párhuzamos történetek (Parallel Stories), was the most popular book in translation in Taiwan in 2015. It won the Open Book Award, with which author Péter Nádas, translator Yu Zemin, and editor Lio Shuhui gained widespread recognition for their work. The volume was published by Manbu Wenhua Publishing House.

“This is the first volume of a trilogy by an author who, though he was unknown to me, is one of the most important writers in Hungary. The stories, which follow several different threads, move separately, in parallel, mysteriously, and yet they are remarkably interconnected. It is a difficult read, yet captivating. The writer’s views are unique, his depictions delicate and detailed.

The scenes may seem quite everyday, but they are nothing of the kind. The work kindles its reader’s interest in the next two volumes,” writes Zhu Weicheng about the first volume of Párhuzamos történetek (Parallel Stories).

At the Taipei International Book Exhibition Az éjszaka legmélyén (In the Very Depth of the Night), the second volume of Párhuzamos történetek (Parallel Stories), will be available, also in translation by Yu Zemin.

Zemin is already at work on A szabadság lélegzete (The Breath of Freedom), the third book of the Párhuzamos történetek (Parallel Stories) trilogy.

Péter Nádas was born in Budapest on October 14, 1942. In the autumn of 1958, he became an apprentice photographer. In the spring of 1961, he completed the exam to become a professional photographer, and in September he began to work as an assistant photojournalist for the editorial board of Nők Lapja (“Women’s Magazine”). Here he made the acquaintance of reporter Magda Salamon, and the two began to live together in March 1962. On the second day of Christmas in 1962, he completed his story entitled A biblia (The Bible), which was published in 1967. He completed Egy családregény vége (The End of a Family Story; English translation

by Imre Goldstein, 1998) in August 1972, but it was not published until 1977 (by Szépirodalmi Publishing House). He began working on the first version of Emlékiratok könyve (A Book of Memories; English translation by Ivan Sanders and Imre Goldstein, 1997) in the summer of 1973. He destroyed the manuscript in the spring of 1974 and a few months later began to write the version of the novel that was eventually published. On April 15 1985, he finished Emlékiratok könyve. He began work on the novel entitled Párhuzamos történetek (Parallel Stories; English translation by Imre Goldstein, 2011) that summer, but he interrupted his work on the novel several times. Finally, after eighteen years of work, Parallel Stories was published in the autumn of 2005 in three volumes. It has been published in English, German, French, Swedish, Norwegian, Slovak, and Croatian, and along with the translation into Chinese, the Italian, Rumanian, Slovenian and Spanish translations are also forthcoming.

At the moment, Péter Nádas is working on his autobiography Világló részletek (“Illuminated Details”), which will be published in 2017, but his new book entitled Az élet sója (“The Salt of Life”), with illustrations by András Forgách, will be published this year in Hungary and Germany.

Photo: Jelenkor Kiadó, Bálint Pörneczi

Photo: Jelenkor Kiadรณ, Bรกlint Pรถrneczi

Parallel Stories “To write the stories of people who never could have met or could only have known one another very superficially, and yet speak extensively about one another’s fates. Can this concealed and enigmatic connection find a place in the closed structure of a narrative? Or perhaps stories that are independent of one another or even depend upon one another, but are in any case stories contained within themselves that come into contact with one another in a structure the very mold of which is chaos itself.

Formally, all this would mean that I should not only forget the closed structure, but I should also turn back to everything that chaos originally must have meant to the Greeks. As a verb, it meant to yawn. As a noun, a yawningly empty space. It was used to denote things about which no one could have said how and why and of what and at what prompting they became, at the beginning of time, what they are.” Péter Nádas “A gigantic work on the landscapes of literature. Anyone who has read it is not the same person anymore.” Die Zeit “But the feeling of frustration mirrors, with uncomfortable closeness, the thwarted reader’s. Nádas extends his hand, time and again, only to pull it back as soon as the reader tries to grasp it. “He must live and die locked into himself,” Nádas writes. And that, despite his immense talent, may well serve as the motto of Parallel Stories.” The New York Times “Parallel Stories is an enthralling repository of knowledge of the craft.”

Zsolt Bagi, Historian of Philosophy “Even if it seems as if the author has given his book a harmless, meaningless, crime-story plot, the illusion only lasts until they find the dead body in Berlin, in the zoo. We pick up this thread 800 pages later, and even then only furtively, almost as an aside. Every chapter seems to progress according to its own rhythm, contained within itself, according to an uncertain order. Only after several hundred pages does a complex edifice consisting of allusions and echoed references emerge. Parallel Stories is a gigantic fresco.” Le Monde “A novel 1,100 pages long that took four years to translate from the Hungarian is pretty intimidating, all the more so when no less than Susan Sontag declared one of the author’s previous works, A Book of Memories, »the greatest novel written in our time«.” The New York Times

“And although it’s certain, insofar as anything can be, that Péter Nádas would have become an extraordinary writer no matter what his circumstances, life in Hungary under a Soviet-backed regime has left a burning imprint on his writing. His work’s frank claims to be on a high level, its ambition, assurance, rigor, and tone of urgency, as well as the extent to which it sometimes makes free with the reader’s stamina, not only suggest irrepressible artistic and moral force but also seem unburdened by personal arrogance. What is at issue for him, clearly, is to discover truth and tell it in whatever way possible. Deborah Eisenberg, The New York Review of Books “The writings of Péter Nádas always try to bring things as close as possible to our organs of sense, in contrast with narratives and ideologies. We must learn to see in order to be able rise above the narratives. And yet by the same token we must smell the odor of things in order to be able to perceive the real world of visible signs, however unpleasant this may be, like the detective Kienast detects the scent of the pubic hair of the dead body.

The organs of the senses, in contrast with mendacious narrative, always let things speak.” Zsolt Bagi: Realizmus (“Realism”, in: Pontos észrevételek, Jelenkor Kiadó, 2015) The Chinese translator of Parallel Stories, Yu Zemin In addition to translating Péter Nádas, Yu Zemin has also translated works

by Imre Kertész, Péter Esterházy, László Krasznahorkai, Attila Bartis, György Dalos, György Dragomán and Sándor Márai into Chinese. While working on the translation of Parallel Stories, he often corresponded with Nádas, because, as he himself said at a conference on literary translation, “Chinese denotes everything quite precisely. We do not have the word grandmother. In Chinese, we say, ‘my mother’s mother or ‘my father’s mother.’ In every such case I had to write Nádas to ask exactly whose mother a given ‘grandmother’ was, since in Chinese we only have this kind of term for this familial relationship.”

Photo: Jelenkor Kiadó, Bálint Pörneczi

Jelenkor Kiadó Kft. H–1066 Budapest, Nyugati tér 1. (Hungary) E-mail: info@jelenkor.com www.facebook.com/jelenkorkiado