A Feast in the Garden

by George Konrád

Book Overview

The first novel in more than a decade by Hungary's most distinguished writer. I am writing my most hazardous book, says George Konrad. I have been sentenced to examine myself. The result is a rich,... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 015130548X
• ISBN13: 9780151305483
• Release Date: January 1992
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt P
• Length: 394 Pages
• Weight: 1.50 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.4" x 6.3" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

More wonderful fiction from eastern Europe

There is something about the fiction of Eastern Europe that is both marvelous and undefinable. Milan Kundara's Unbearable Lightness of Being, Kadare's Three-Arched Bridge (above) do so much more than tell a story and draw characters. They define places and moods with great style and subtlety. Hungarian novelist George Konrad's A Feast in the Garden falls into this marvelous class of books. The "story" Konrad tells is not linear, and might not be considered even a story at all, the way it switches from place to place, time to time, and character to character. It is a serious work, dealing both with the pogrom of the Jews under the Nazis and Soviet oppression during the 50's and 60's, but the author's tone is not one of unremitting grief.Like the Kundara novel, I believe this book might best be read on a series of summer afternoons, at a European sidewalk cafe, as people pass and friends drop by. The cafe is important to Konrad's world.One brief description, by the intellectual womanizer Janos while visiting Jerusalem, is worth quoting in full: "There he was, a city loafer, sitting in an Arab cafe in Jerusalem because he could not find a decent Eastern European Jewish cafe. How can one wait for the Messiah without a decent cafe? Where do you think the Messiah would go first, where would he start his preaching? In such a cafe, obviously." Many more such delights await the reader of this fine book.