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"A beautifully crafted novel of connection and continuity" - Kirkus Reviews (Starred)
A celebrated literary saga, The adventures of twelve generations -- Over three hundred years of Hungarian history, and the story of all fathers.
The first eclipse in The Book of Fathers takes place on May 17th, 1706, in war-torn Hungary. The country has recently passed from the Ottomans over to Hapsburg control and Cornelius Csillag is returning full of hope to join Hungary’s movement for independence and his country’s future. But Cornelius is brutally murdered by brigands, and so his grandson is left to push on alone. In memory of Cornelius, the grandson keeps notes of his life in a “Book of Fathers” to be passed on down in due course – the book is both a material object and a gift, mystical and inexplicable, the historical legacy of the Csillag fathers. And each of the subsequent chapters follows the next step of the family as they become successful merchants… change their ways and name (to Sternovsky, then Stern, and back to Csillag)… fall in love or not… and are finally graced with a son with whom to share this “Book of Fathers”. As the reader goes forward with the Csillags, we also go through the great swings of Hungarian history – the wars, regimes, religions, politics and pogroms – and the more subtle changes in daily life. Time goes on until the tenth descendant, returning alone from the concentration camps, burns the “Book of Fathers” to finally free the Csillags of history’s weight – but also leaving his descendants adrift. The novel’s second (and last) eclipse takes place on August 11th, 1999. Henryk Csillag is American through-and-through and ignorant of his origins; he decides to look into it all– and his first son, Konrad, is born with that mystical gift again and the “Book of Fathers” is reborn…. Miklós Vámos’ writing follows the style of the period, the changing voices of the times, with each chapter of this masterpiece, growing increasingly modern with each generation of his heroes. This ingeniousness has earned The Book of Fathers much acclaim as a literary feat – but it is also a witty, moving and sweeping novel.
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14 languages
Canada: Little, Brown
Croatia:Znanje
Germany: btb*
France: Editions Denoël
Greece: Malliaris Paedia
Holland: Contact
Israel: Kinneret
Italy: Einaudi
Latin America: Lumen
Poland: Albatros
Serbia: Laguna
Spain: Lumen
UK: Little, Brown
US: Other Press
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