To Err Is Divine: A Novel [Hardcover]

Agota Bozai (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 29, 2004

With To Err Is Divine, Hungarian writer Agota Bozai has fashioned a keen reflection on the overpowering excesses of human greed. Anna Levay, a widow and secondary-school teacher in a small resort city in Lake Balaton, is close to retirement. One evening, after her bath, Anna discovers a strange light floating about her head. It is a halo, like that of a saint. Anna is not a particularly good person and is, in fact, an atheist. She sets about trying to conceal her halo, but realises that only the truly innocent, small children and animals, can see it. But the concurrent power to heal and produce miracles are visible to a less exclusive audience, and once the greedy mayor and physician of the town discover Anna's new gifts, they set about using her to their advantage. They build a luxury health resort and line their pockets. Written as surveillance reports from heaven, the eleven chapters recount the event surrounding the (as it turns out) mistakenly bestowed halo in this richly ironic tale. Bozai's novel, first published in Hungarian in 1998, is a stunning portrait of a world disposed to depravity in the pursuit of wealth.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Bozai's English-language debut, a bestseller in Germany and Hungary, pokes wily, subversive fun at Communist backwardness, capitalist excesses, religious suggestibility and stubborn atheism alike. Anna Lévay, widowed young when her husband was killed in an uprising against Hungarian police, is now a penny-pinching schoolteacher approaching the end of middle age. Emerging from her bath one night, she discovers what appears to be a halo shining about her head. Anna's disbelief and attempts at indifference become funnier (and increasingly difficult to maintain) as miracles and wonders multiply around her: fish leap ashore when she passes by, joints mend themselves at her touch, water turns to wine. For the humble, pragmatic Anna, these unsolicited supernatural powers are puzzling and alarming—an affront to her highly developed sense of dignity. When a prominent doctor in the once-popular resort town begins to suspect that recent goings-on are related to Anna, he joins forces with the mayor to draw her into a cunning plan to revive the town's tourist trade and line their own pockets in the process. The novel gets off to a slow start, but Anna gradually grows into an engaging innocent whose crotchety scorn for the self-important avarice of the powers that be, whatever their political affiliations, is as dark and funny as it is consciousness-raising.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

After her bath one evening, Hungarian widow Anna Levay discovers that she has the most extraordinary of afflictions: a halo. She doesn't seem like the usual candidate for canonization, not unless living the simple life of a thrifty schoolteacher counts as a miracle. But there it is, the halo. It's a good thing no one can see it, though the animals seem to have a thing for it: dogs following her around and fish flopping ashore and confusing everyone. When Anna's doctor notices her mysterious healing powers, however, his ambitious hunch turns into a forint-making scheme, and Bozai's whimsy hardens into prescient satire. Already well received in Germany and Hungary, Bozai's prodigious American debut is more inspiring in its critique of crude capitalism than in its theology (though it is certainly not nostalgic for Hungary's communist years). But this novel's true luminosity is its levity, which artfully veils a sad story about human greed and a frugal old woman who would gladly trade sainthood to have her long-dead revolutionary husband back. Brendan Driscoll
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: Counterpoint; 1ST edition (June 29, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1582432775
• ISBN-13: 978-1582432779
• Product Dimensions: 8.7 x 5.7 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.1 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,546,961 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Quirky, December 17, 2006

By 

Dixie Diamond "DD" (Texas) - See all my reviews

This review is from: To Err Is Divine (Hardcover)

Unfortunately, I didn't have time to read this in long stretches so I think I missed a few things, but I thought the premise was interesting and original, and came off well even in translation. It is not an "active" book; be prepared for a slow, detailed, read. It reminded me in some ways of Ibsen's play "An Enemy of the People". I will probably read it again when I have more time.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The least likely saint, December 5, 2006

By 

wiredweird "wiredweird" (Earth, or somewhere nearby) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: To Err Is Divine (Hardcover)

Anna Levay is a quiet person. You might not even notice her if you passed her on the street. She's heavy-ish and sixty-ish, a widowed schoolteacher with a cordially estranged son. She's the terror of her classroom, but a fond memory to two (going on three) generations of students. She's one of the little people in a pervasively corrupt village where only the big people do more than scrape by. Like everyone else in her world she muddles by well enough, just hoping not to attract attention from anyone important.

And, quite abruptly, she's a saint or something like it. That embarassing halo was her first clue. It wouldn't go away, but at least no one else seemed to notice. Then the miracles started piling up unintentionally, including mysterious behaviors of animals when she came near, magical (and overly personal) growth of her plants, water into wine (not the done thing in a school environment), and miracle cures. But Anna is a sensible woman with little time for miracles, and a vague wish that they'd just go away. Sensibly, she seeks out a doctor to see if her sainthood can be cured - not that she's so explicit about a state that she barely believe in herself. The doctor, however, is one of the town's venal in-crowd, and quickly realizes the commercial potential of her miraculous cures.

Agota Bozai's story is a gentle stroll through the life of this ordinary woman as extraordinary things start to happen around her. She's honest, unassuming, and easy to like. As a result, she make the perfect counter to the petty power trading, embezzling, and scamming so rampant in the post-Soviet world. It's not a satire, so much as a wry look business-as-usual when something and someone very unusual appear among them. The right reader will find a lot to like in this little book.

//wiredweird

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Hungarian Fantasy Realism, with Religious Overtones!, May 30, 2006

By 

S. Henkels (Devon, Pa United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: To Err Is Divine: A Novel (Hardcover)

While taking a bath, a 59 year old school widowed teacher, notices a peculiar golden aura around her head, and at first tries to hide this halo..Eventually, she realizes that hardly anyone notices it. While wandering the beach, thousands of fish flock to the beach for a real fisherman's holiday. But the hotel/tourist industry, and local politicians investigate this very strange occurence. Even strange things also happen in the local church, and the priest is not sure whether a miracle really happens or not. Finally, a doctor notices her very unique powers, and the powers that be open a posh and expensive medical/ health center. The rest is a fun page turner with many bizarre turns, a mix of pointilistic realism, and the possible supernatural. Very enjoyble way to spend a few hours!