A Guest in My Own Country: A Human Life

This powerful, highly literary memoir by a world-famous author—essayist and novelist Konrád was elected president of International PEN in 1990—discursively traces his life as a Hungarian child during the Holocaust, and later as a student during the Hungarian revolution of 1956. While it deals with his growth as an intellectual and writer, it is primarily a meditation on the conflicts between national and individual identity. Konrád's prose is distanced and unemotional, but always carries a potent punch: "In the winter of 1944–45 I saw any number of dead bodies. I could picture myself among them, but the tasks of day-to-day existence obscured most of my imaginings. Danger makes you practical." This cool, objective voice works as well for the smaller vignettes as it does when he is musing on Dr. Mengele's obsession with killing Jewish children. There are moments of almost surreal narrative here—his mother and father tell Konrád (b. 1933) and his sister bedtime "adventure stories" of how they survived the war—but also moments of stately, traditional bildungsroman. His account of the 1956 revolution, in which he was an active participant, is equally laconic. This memoir stirs and provokes in unexpected ways that linger after it is read. (Apr. 24)