Summary
Péter Nádas: Terrible Stories
The characters that populate the village on the banks of the Danube are wonderful: Teréz, a stumbling obscene woman with a pagan tongue, Róza, a dim-witted wage-earner with an uncontrollable erotic urge and a gaze fixed on the sky above the sky, a baker's assistant possessed by the devil, a poor and lonely teacher Hamza, a Catholic priest and a Protestant pastor - both outsiders and observers, a fascinating and beautiful student Piroska, who is simultaneously attracted and repelled by criminal psychology... There are also disenfranchised nobles and great ladies from Pest who come for summer vacations. It is a panopticon of heroes driven by resentment and malice, with sudden outbursts of kindness. And then there are the ghosts and demons that haunt them, and what will inevitably follow - crime.
The new novel of Hungarian and European contemporary classic Péter Nádas Horrible Stories is a great literary holiday. It is a story that overflows from the head of one hero into the head of another, pours out like the Danube from its archetypal bed into dialogues and omniscient insights and returns to the mysterious collective we. In a world reminiscent of Céline's and Chekhov's, he dances on the edges of knowledge about the soul, evil and demons. The playing, alchemy, witchcraft of a great writer in the maturity of his literary gift would not exceed the limits, those in literature, life, the writer himself - those in us.
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