The End

Description

A serpentine maze of memory and artistic obsession in post-war communist Hungary told in bold experimental style and perfect for fans of Helen DeWitt

Nothing approximates death as closely as photography.

Unspooling like a roll of film, The End captures in frames of language the faces and places of András’ memory, which together form a fever-dream collage of an artist’s psyche.

In a small town in communist Hungary, András Szabad’s childhood comes to an abrupt end with his father’s return from prison and the death of his loving mother. In search of new beginnings, András moves with his father to Budapest, where he discovers a passion for photography, for uncovering the invisible through the visible, and for fixing matter and memory so as to ward them against the inevitability of time.

An unorthodox first encounter brings András together with Éva, and soon they become entangled in a psychosexual relationship of consuming passion, but also bitterness and resentment.

With vibrant precision and fluid dialogue, Attila Bartis blends a sprawling family saga with 20th-century European history and offers an unflinchingly lucid yet boundlessly compassionate account of psychological devastation under authoritarianism.”The strength of this nearly 600-page novel rests on the sometimes uncertain, often funny, well-paced narrative. The short, focused chapters titled in parentheses by a single feature—the punctum in Barthes’ terms—gradually unveil a portrait of a vulnerable, often stubborn, flawed man who is not sure where he stands in the world.” — Joseph Schreiber, Rough Ghosts

“This monumental novel is clearly, at least in part, autobiographical . . . Photographs are key to this book as Bartis himself as well as Andras’s father and son are keen photographers . . . The photographic way of seeing things, scenes and people will play an important role. . .. A complex and fascinating novel.” — The Modern Novel

“A vivid and highly personal Künstlerroman about damaged lives deeply steeped in struggle, but nevertheless still occasionally shot through with glimmers of joy. Intensely human, painfully honest, and deftly written.” — Brian Evenson, author of Song for the Unraveling of the World, winner of the Shirley Jackson Award and finalist for the Ray Bradbury PrizeThe Romanian-Hungarian writer Attila Bartis is one of the most accomplished and inventive members of the contemporary Eastern European literary vanguard. With a background in photography, Bartis has published dozens of books to critical acclaim across the genres of theater, photography and fiction. He received the the Tibor Déry Prize and the Sandor Márai Prize for his novel Tranquility, whose 2008 translation by Archipelago was awarded the inaugural Best Translated Book Award. 
 
Judith Sollosy is a prolific translator and speaker based in Budapest. She has published two books on the art of translation and her work has appeared in CrossCurrents, PEN America, The New Yorker, Common Knowledge and elsewhere. She was awarded the Hungarian PEN Club’s Ady Medal for her work popularizing Hungarian literature in the United States.CA

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