Customer Reviews

A Guest in My Own Country: A Hungarian Life

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For those not familiar, George Konrad is a world-famous author and essayist and former President of International PEN. He survived the Nazi holocaust as a child, and was a dissident under the Soviet-run Hungarian government until that government fell.

Even if you're not familiar, or even all that interested, the book is a compelling read. His is a remarkable life.

The book lingers well after you finish reading. Konrad's observations are dispassionate yet keen, and explanatory of life subjected to horror and oppression - and in the meantime offers hope to those of us not living under oppression but still looking for meaning. It ends with such powerful optimism and love of life I closed the book after the final pages and just sat, ponderously, reflecting on how relevant his extraordinary Hungarian life is to my own banal story.

He asks the question, Where is Home?

Answer: Memory is Home.

Recommended!

While the book overall is an interesting read and quite insightful in some places, it is not always easy to follow and some readers may find it harder to read than others for several reasons.

First, the book is a translation from the Hungarian and there are some grammatical errors and typos in the book, as well as some odd recurrences, in that people are almost always "shot dead" rather than simply "shot" or simply "dead"; nothing overly bothersome, but still noticeable and potentially annoying depending on the reader.

Second, the book is divided into two parts, with each "part" divided into sectional bursts as short as one paragraph or as long as three or four-pages. These parts do not necessarily follow each other in terms of historical timeline or story. So if you are looking for a clear, linear, easy-to-follow, yet personal and descriptive, historical account of life from pre-WW2 to post-communist Hungary, you may find this book a bit hard to get through, and in some places down-right annoying!

The book also gets more philosophical towards the end (more Ernest Hemingway-esque if you wish), with short reflective sentences in quick succession, like: "I dash out of the house into the meadow. You cannot see this spot from the village. I stop and turn around. The vast emptiness is refreshing - the surrounding hills, the ruins of a castle sacked three hundred years ago, the solitude. There is no one here in the bright noon light. It is no effort at all for me simply to be". Again, not a problem per se if you like that kind of writing or these kinds of books.

The book is insightful in some parts, although I'm not sure what recounting some of his sexual adventures and thoughts brings to the story, other than a basic idea of `live and love life and the women in it, sleep with the pretty ones that are willing to sleep with you, and do not be tied down by marriage' (though he was married 3 times); a physical and intellectual coming-of-age and his related reflections on this transformation perhaps?

Overall, I was expecting a more linear or sequential story of his life and adventures (maybe some chapters?!). His stories come through by the end, or as you piece them together yourself, but I found it to be a harder book to follow than necessary and not very well organized. Other than the parts where he describes his ordeals/adventures in Budapest as the remnants of the German Army are pushed back, I would not really label it a captivating page-turner, but still interesting enough to read from a later-in-life philosophical perspective.

If you are not Hungarian, are planning to travel to Hungary, and/or wanted to get a bird's eye view of what Hungary or Hungarians are like as a people or culture, this may not be the book for you.

On the product itself (the paperback edition), it has excellent quality binding and paper, with a crisp clear print in average-sized letters causing no eye strain. Amazon lists it as 352 pages, but the totality of the story is +/-300 pages.

This is a lovely book, rich in historical and personal anecdotes, told with a clear, dispassionate delivery. I was in Budapest last year and my only regret is I had not yet read this memoir. It leaves you with a palpable sense of loss and longing for the missed opportunities of the past, yet hopeful toward a more benign future.