A Guest in My Own Country: A Hungarian Life
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$15.95
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$11.96
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Manufacturer: Other Press
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 894.51133
EAN: 9781590511398
ISBN: 1590511395
Label: Other Press
Manufacturer: Other Press
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 352
Publication Date: 2007-04-24
Publisher: Other Press
Release Date: 2007-04-17
Studio: Other Press
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Editorial Reviews:
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A powerful memoir of war, politics, literature, and family life by one of Europe's leading intellectuals.
When George Konrád was a child of eleven, he, his sister, and two cousins managed to flee to Budapest from the Hungarian countryside the day before deportations swept through his home town. Ultimately, they were the only Jewish children of the town to survive the Holocaust.
A Guest in My Own Country recalls the life of one of Eastern Europe's most accomplished modern writers, beginning with his survival during the final months of the war. Konrád captures the dangers, the hopes, the betrayals and courageous acts of the period through a series of carefully chosen episodes that occasionally border on the surreal (as when a dead German soldier begins to speak, attempting to justify his actions).
The end of the war launches the young man on a remarkable career in letters and politics. Offering lively descriptions of both his private and public life in Budapest, New York, and Berlin, Konrád reflects insightfully on his role in the Hungarian Uprising, the notion of "internal emigration"—the fate of many writers who, like Konrád, refused to leave the Eastern Bloc under socialism—and other complexities of European identity. To read A Guest in My Own Country is to experience the recent history of East-Central Europe from the inside.
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: recommended
Comment: For those not familiar, George Konrad is a world-famous author and essayist and former President of International PEN. He survived the Nazi holocaust as a child, and was a dissident under the Soviet-run Hungarian government until that government fell.
Even if you're not familiar, or even all that interested, the book is a compelling read. His is a remarkable life.
The book lingers well after you finish reading. Konrad's observations are dispassionate yet keen, and explanatory of life subjected to horror and oppression - and in the meantime offers hope to those of us not living under oppression but still looking for meaning. It ends with such powerful optimism and love of life I closed the book after the final pages and just sat, ponderously, reflecting on how relevant his extraordinary Hungarian life is to my own banal story.
He asks the question, Where is Home?
Answer: Memory is Home.
Recommended!
Customer Rating: 
Summary: a wonderful read
Comment: This is a lovely book, rich in historical and personal anecdotes, told with a clear, dispassionate delivery. I was in Budapest last year and my only regret is I had not yet read this memoir. It leaves you with a palpable sense of loss and longing for the missed opportunities of the past, yet hopeful toward a more benign future.
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