THE BOOK OF HRABAL - PETER ESTERHÁZY / BRANDL & SCHLESINGER / McPherson's Printing Group, 2004 / Paperback

ISBN-13: 9780646204727 / 978-0646204727

Printed in Australia

Pages 171

A paradoxical and at times very funny collage of jazz, angels, policemen, wife, children, God, national history and the end of communism in Hungary.

PÉTER ESTERHÁZY, born in 1950, is one of Hungary's foremost writers whose short stories, novels and essays have been a cause célèbre for over a decade. His prose is modern and experimental and relies on the manipulating of the language itself, often intentionally blurring conventional meaning to create a sense of new meanings, temporarity and relationships. Profoundly moving, highly enter- taining and brilliantly inventive, his novel The Book of Hrabal, combines a tribute to the great Czech storyteller Bohumil Hrabal (author of the Closely Observed Trains and I Served the King of England) with a farewell to the years of Communism in Eastern Europe. It is also a meditation on the mixed blessings of domestic life and a song of praise to the blues and the jazz saxophone, as well as a light-hearted treatise on angels and on the ongoing relationship between God and humankind as represented by the writer and his wife Anna, who is expecting their fourth child.

JUDITH SOLLOSY has a degree in English literature from Columbia University. Since 1975 she has been living in Budapest where she is senior editor with a major publishing company. Her drama and short story translations have appeared in books and periodicals in the US, the UK, Canada and Australia. Her latest translations include Péter Esterházy's Little Hungarian Pornography, Endre Ady's Neighbours in the Night (Corvina 1994) and István Örkény's One Minute Stories (Brandl & Schlesinger 1994).

ADAM RISH, born in 1953, lives in Sydney and is a medical prac- titioner and professional artist. Over the past twenty years he has exhibited regularly in Australia, USA and Canada and is represented in many public and private collections. He is currently working in collaboration with indigenous artist in Turkey, Indonesia and outback Australia.