Péter Nádas is one of Hungary’s leading writers and a major figure in European life and letters. To celebrate the release of his acclaimed new book Fire & Knowledge, Mr. Nádas made his first visit to the United States in over a decade.

The U.S. publication of A Book of Memories in 1997 introduced to our shores the work of an extraordinary novelist, an artist whom critics easily compared to Robert Musil, James Joyce, and Thomas Mann. Now, in Fire and Knowledge, we discover other aspects of Péter Nádas’ major presence as a trenchant commentator on the events that have transformed his country and all of Europe since 1989; as a stunning literary critic; as a subtle interpreter of language and politics in societies both free and unfree; and as a moralist with a discerning eye for the crippling effects of deception and hypocrisy upon us all.

In addition, Fire and Knowledge acquaints us more fully with Nádas’s evolution as a writer of fiction, for it includes stories dating from the 1960s and 1970s, when he had to write in extremely stringent, even dangerous circumstances, as well as some from more recent years, since the publication of his major novels and the reintegration of Western and Eastern Europe. Here, in full, is a rich and rewarding compilation of works by one of our greatest living writers.

Péter Nádas - writer, essayist, critic, and playwright - makes his home in Gombosszeg, a small village in western Hungary. His writings include collections of essays (Stage Set, On Heavenly and Earthly Love, Dialogue, Scrapes of Paper and other Miscellaneous Writings, Essays), novellas (Yearbook and Procession), and novels (A Book of Memories and Parallel Stories). His new book is Fire and Knowledge: Fiction and Essays.

Source: Hungarian Cultural Center

Susan Rubin Suleiman was born in Budapest and emigrated to the U.S. as a child. She has been on the Harvard University faculty since 1981, where she is currently the C. Douglas Dillon Professor of the Civilization of France and Professor of Comparative Literature. Suleiman has won many honors, including a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Rockefeller Humanities Fellowship, and several NEH Fellowships. Her books include Subversive Intent: Gender, Politics, and the Avant-Garde (1990), and the memoir Budapest Diary: In Search of the Motherbook (1996). Her latest book is Crises of Memory and the Second World War (Harvard University Press, 2006).

Paul Holdengräber is the Director of Public Programs—now known as "LIVE from the NYPL"—for The Research Libraries of The New York Public Library.

Related links:

Hungarian Cultural Center, NY

NYPL

Szemben Kafkával
Márkus Krisztina interjúja Nádas Péterrel (magyarul)

Hungarian Cultural Center - gimagine photo reports