Fire and Knowledge: Fiction and Essays

by Péter Nádas, Imre Goldstein (Translator)

This volume collects shorter pieces from 1962 to 2000. Essays and stories in one volume can strike Americans as an uneasy fit, but Nadas's essays are so distinctively associative that they have the force of stories. Judging from these short works, a childhood in Stalinist Budapest left Nadas with a healthy respect for the secret, the unspoken. In the title essay, a multiple arson (someone set fire to the four corners of Hungary) leads an impromptu outbreak of candor on the television.

Contains:
The great Christmas killing
Liar, cheater
The Bible
Homecoming
Little Alex
On Thomas Mann's diaries
The lamb
Hamlet is free
Lady Klára's house
Melancholy
Vivisection
A tale of fire and knowledge
Family picture in Purple Dusk
Our poor, poor Sascha Anderson
Work song
Minotaur
Fate and technique
Meeting God
Parasitic systems
At the muddy shore of appearances
The citizen of the world and the he-goat
Clogged pain
Way

A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice

The U.S. publication of A Book of Memories in 1997 introduced to our shores the work of an extraordinary novelist, Péter Nádas. Now, in Fire and Knowledge, a superb collection of short stories, essays, and literary criticism, we discover other aspects of Nádas's major presence in European life and letters: as a trenchant commentator on the events that have transformed Europe since 1989, as a stunning literary critic, and as a subtle interpreter of language and politics in societies both free and unfree. Here, in full, is a rich and rewarding compilation of brilliantly original, touching, witty, and thought-provoking works by one of our greatest living writers.

Genres: Short Stories, Essays, Fiction, Literature, Literary Fiction

400 pages, Hardcover

First published July 24, 2007

About the author

Hungarian novelist, essayist, and dramatist, a major central European literary figure. Nádas made his international breakthrough with the monumental novel A Book of Memories (1986), a psychological novel following the tradition of Proust, Thomas Mann, and magic realism.

Péter Nádas was born in Budapest, as the son of a high-ranking party functionary. Nádas's grandfather, Moritz Grünfeld, changed his name into Hungarian, which was considered a scandal in the family. Nádas's youth was shadowed by the loss of his parents. Nádas's mother died of cancer when he was young and his father committed suicide. At the age of 16 his uncle gave him a camera, and after dropping out of school Nádas turned to photojournalism. During the late 1960s and early 1970s, he worked as an editor, reader, and drama consultant. After the Soviet-led invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968, Nádas quit his job as a journalist and devoted himself to literature. "I resigned, walked out, and turned my back on the system to save my soul," he later said.

Reviews

[David M · Rating 5 out of 5]

I did not long for rolling heads, human sacrifice, gurgling blood, or washed-out brains; I wanted only parched lips, the fine fragrance of genitalia, sperm, slick and slippery vaginas, intercourse with people of all races and social strata, the smelly sweat and protracted moans of love. What every living being discovers in him or herself as the primal chaos and the attraction of mortality.

Make love, not war? It's not always easy to follow the master's train of thought. This collection is a peek inside his workshop. Some of the essays here are pretty impenetrable- not sure if 'Melancholy' is intended as a parody of Walter Benjamin or what. A few of the stories are experimental' in a boring, programmatic way.

But overall, this is a vital, excellent work in the Nadas canon. Stories like 'Little Alex', 'Lady Klara'd House', and 'The Bible' offer miniature explorations of his epic themes. His memoir of writing Book of Memories and his review of Thomas Mann's diaries are among the most fascinating cases I've read of a novelist reflecting on his craft.


*
In an interview published after Parallel Stories, Nadas said that while he doesn't use the internet he approves of its existence. I wonder, though, if a contemporary writer who's active on Twitter, Facebook, or (let's be real) Goodreads could ever share Nadas's total devotion to his art.