Customer Reviews

Between Words and Silence

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Beney's book is not like any other book I have ever read.

It is hard to explain to someone who has not read the book. She takes you on a trip into deeper consciousness of the world around us. This may sound bizarre. It is. After finishing it is like having been brainwashed into an intense realization of nature and environment, waking up all the senses in you.

This is not a cult book.

This is a must for anyone who is looking to understand (and accept?) why certain questions are difficult to answer.

Hate the book or love it, it took me two readings before it sunk in. For me it has changed the meaning of 'literature' and 'philosophy'.

I found "Between Words and Silence" a brilliant piece of contemporary Hungarian literature.

It is a collection of essays about emotions. Melancholic, passionate, sometimes surreal. The author uses beautiful metaphors expressing the theme of each essay. E.g.: Between Love and Madness. Between Fate and Destiny, Between Poetry and Prose.

The translator says that this book is "an extraordinary introduction to the isolated otherness of Hungarian culture". I could not agree more. Art is the way a culture can truly express itself. This book is a good example.

"Between Words and Silence" is the first translation of Zsuzsa Beney. I hope that with this book Zsuzsa Beney will be acknowledged internationally as one of the great Hungarian authors of our time. She deserves to be right up there with Esterhazy and Konrad.

The final chapter has not been written down on paper. As the author says: "Please, if you read this book through to the end, try, without the words existing there in front of you, to listen for the final, unwritten chapter: Between Silence and Muteness".

I hope you do read it to the end. Even if sometimes the sentences seem to have no end to them. Hang in there, a verb is on the way!

PS: If you are interested in Hungarian culture, I also recommend "Now you see it, now you don't" by Marion Merrick. This autobiography describes the life of a British couple living in Budapest in the communist era. Not a great work of literature, however the anecdotes are very recognizable and very enjoyable to anyone who has ever lived in Hungary or has ever had any kind of (business) relationship with a Hungarian. Very interesting!

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Another of these short, enigmatic books I have been lent in recent months (twice...) by one of those people with an unnerving gleam in their eye.

So it is supposed to contain hidden clues, riddles of "secret learning" only passed down millennia by word of mouth? Something "older than the kabbala" said my first, more disturbing, acquaintance. Having read it, I can say, yes, all too possible.

Please be careful what you look for. Those seeking power have a terrible way of finding it. Do not enter the labyrinth.

After reading it many times, I still can't do justice to its beauty and subtlety; its mix of lyricism and metaphysics; its sense of wonder and mystery: the pathos of its philosophy and prose.