A Hungarian mystic's unflinching exploration of love and sexuality. Erotic attraction and the thirst for transformation burning in Palyi's characters is quenched only by sex and death as these two novellas explore the physical and psychological aspects of eroticism through the sexual relationships of its characters in 1930s and 1980s Budapest.
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Editorial Reviews
From Booklist
These two novellas, set 50 years apart, separately explore the rarefied, if perilous, nexus between sex, spirituality, and death. Both also fixate on the amplified allure of (almost) unattainable actresses and suppose the possibility of redemption through death. In the first, set in the Budapest of the 1930s, a tormented Catholic priest aches for a surprisingly vulnerable stage diva through whom he soars closer to God than he will ever again feel in the pulpit. In the second, the diva's 1980s analogue plunges a young mechanic-screenwriter's life into ecstatic chaos, transforming his guilty conscience into another piece of scenery. These parallel encounters with the "pre-budding ecstasy of nature" may be profoundly religious, or deeply blasphemous, or perhaps both. Historically minded readers not too distracted by Palyi's lush, electric sex scenes will notice that these stories bookend nicely Hungary's totalitarian period and may be conceived as gutsy and exotic, if somewhat minimalist, commentary on the years in between. Brendan Driscoll
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Review
Alongside Péter Nádas, Pályi is the sole consistent cultivator of ecstatic prose in Hungary. -- József T. Reményi, Népszabadság
If you could imagine an Eastern European William Faulkner on powerful aphrodisiacs ... Out of Oneself might be something he'd write. -- Absinthe Literary Review
In his twin novellas ... Palyi creates a spiritually and sexually charged fictional world ruled by a pair of self-styled goddesses. -- American Book Review, Nov.-Dec. 2005
No chance motifs here [...] András Pályi is inimitably good. Recommended way of reading him: with bated breath. -- Péter Esterházy
[N]othing short of tempting God. It is impossible to read [Palyi] without a feeling of reverential dread. -- Péter Nádas
If you could imagine an Eastern European William Faulkner on powerful aphrodisiacs ... Out of Oneself might be something he'd write. -- Absinthe Literary Review
In his twin novellas ... Palyi creates a spiritually and sexually charged fictional world ruled by a pair of self-styled goddesses. -- American Book Review, Nov.-Dec. 2005
No chance motifs here [...] András Pályi is inimitably good. Recommended way of reading him: with bated breath. -- Péter Esterházy
[N]othing short of tempting God. It is impossible to read [Palyi] without a feeling of reverential dread. -- Péter Nádas
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