Parallel Stories

Publisher Marketing: In 1989, the year the Wall came down, a university student in Berlin on his morning run finds a corpse on a park bench and alerts the authorities. This scene opens a novel of extraordinary scope and depth, a masterwork that traces the fate of myriad Europeans Hungarians, Jews, Germans, Gypsies across the treacherous years of the mid-twentieth century. Three unusual men are at the heart of "Parallel Stories" Hans von Wolkenstein, whose German mother is linked to secrets of fascist-Nazi collaboration during the 1940s; Agost Lippay Lehr, whose influential father has served Hungary s different political regimes for decades; and Andras Rott, who has his own dark record of mysterious activities abroad. The web of extended and interconnected dramas reaches from 1989 back to the spring of 1939, when Europe trembled on the edge of war, and extends to the bestial times of 1944 45, when Budapest was besieged, the Final Solution devastated Hungary s Jews, and the war came to an end, and on to the cataclysmic Hungarian Revolution of October 1956. We follow these men from Berlin and Moscow to Switzerland and Holland, from the Mediterranean to the North Sea, and of course, from village to city in Hungary. The social and political circumstances of their lives may vary greatly, their sexual and spiritual longings may seem to each of them entirely unique, yet Peter Nadas s magnificent tapestry unveils uncanny reverberating parallels that link them across time and space. This is Peter Nadas s masterpiece eighteen years in the writing, a sensation in Hungary even before it was published, and almost four years in the translating. "Parallel Stories" is the first foreign translation of this daring, demanding, and momentous novel, and it confirms for an even larger audience what Hungary already knows: that it is the author s greatest work." Review Citations: Library Journal 06/01/2011 pg. 78 (EAN 9780374229764, Hardcover) Library Journal Prepub Alert 06/01/2011 pg. 78 (EAN 9780374229764, Hardcover) Library Journal 08/01/2011 pg. 85 (EAN 9780374229764, Hardcover) Publishers Weekly 08/15/2011 (EAN 9780374229764, Hardcover) Booklist 09/01/2011 pg. 44 (EAN 9780374229764, Hardcover) - *Starred Review Kirkus Reviews 11/01/2011 (EAN 9780374229764, Hardcover) - *Starred Review New York Times Book Review 11/27/2011 pg. 26 (EAN 9780374229764, Hardcover) NY Times Notable Bks of Year 12/04/2011 pg. 25 (EAN 9780374229764, Hardcover) New York Times Book Review 12/04/2011 pg. 70 (EAN 9780374229764, Hardcover) New Yorker (The) 01/30/2012 pg. 71 (EAN 9780374229764, Hardcover) Wilson Fiction Catalog 01/01/2012 pg. 61 (EAN 9780374229764, Hardcover) Wilson Fiction Catalog 01/01/2014 pg. 757 (EAN 9780374229764, Hardcover) Contributor Bio:  Nadas, Peter Peter Nadas was born in Budapest in 1942. Among his works translated into English are the novels A Book of Memories (FSG, 1997), The End of a Family Story (FSG, 1998), and Love (FSG, 2000); a collection of stories and essays, Fire and Knowledge (FSG, 2007); and two pieces of short fiction, A Lovely Tale of Photography and Peter Nadas: Own Death. He lives with his wife in Gombosszeg, Hungary. Contributor Bio:  Morey, Arthur Arthur Morey has recorded countless audiobooks, including titles by such authors as M. Scott Peck, John Updike, Richard Russo, Anne Tyler, and John Irving. He attended Harvard and the University of Chicago and has taught performance and writing at Fordham, Northwestern, and the Art Institute of Chicago. Arthur has appeared in a host of off-Broadway and off-Loop productions. He has won three AudioFile Magazine 'Best Of' Awards: in 2011 for BIOGRAPHY & HISTORY, in for History & Historical Fiction, and in 2009 for Nonfiction & Culture. His work has also garnered multiple AudioFile Earphones awards, and he has been nominated for an Audie Award.