In a Pig's Ear [Paperback]

Paul Bryers (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 15, 2000

Milan, a cynical ex-professor of psychology, escaped from the bleak Czechoslovakia of the 1960’s to become a Hollywood psychiatrist to the stars. The Prague he knew fades into memory, and with the end of the Cold War seems to disappear altogether. But when he returns years later to film an Arthurian legend, the past is waiting. Stasi agents, abandoned castles, and ugly visions of a fascist Europe plague Milan, and he finds himself imprisoned for a grisly murder he didn’t commit. Jailed once again in the land of his birth, Milan turns to a pig, his prison companion, to tell his story. Savage and humorous, In a Pig’s Ear is a harrowing inquiry into the mystery of identity.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Malin has escaped from grim Czechoslovakia in the 1960s with Adam, a golden-haired American with an unusual family background: his mother was a German doctor who married a Jewish G.I. and returned with him to America. Adam becomes a film director but remains fascinated with the dark fairytales his mother told him as a child. Eventually, he returns to Europe to film a decidedly unheroic version of the Arthurian legend and then tries to uncover the real story of his parents' marriage and father's disappearance as Berlin fell. In the process, dark fairytales start coming true, and he is caught up in Nazi violence both past and present. Malin (a Mitteleuropaer Merlin) is drawn in and eventually accused of a murder he doesn't remember committing. The analogy to the Arthurian legend seems a bit strained, but the story itself is both thought-provoking and gripping. Bryers (Coming First) has written a well-paced work that asks questions about self, society, and the force of history with all the flair of an intellectual thriller.?Barbara Hoffert, "Library Journal"
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Kirkus Reviews

The liberation of Berlin is relived--and the Nazi menace stirs again--when a powerfully idealistic American filmmaker returns to his German roots, hoping to make the world a better place. Britisher Bryers (Coming First, 1988, etc.) brings both past and present to life with equal intelligence and skill. Adam Epstein has been a Californian since age two, but he was born a German, in Berlin, in the city's ruinous final days in 1945, of a physician mother and doomed aristocratic father named Conrad von Reisenburg. Adam's war-widowed mother marries the American army captain Sam Epstein and follows him to Hollywood, where he's a successful attorney with plenty of connections--so that baby Adam's future in the movies has all but begun. Flash forward to 1968, put the handsome Adam Epstein in Prague for a student political conference, involve him with the passionate Magda--and then separate the two when Adam escapes across the border from the invading Russians but Magda doesn't. Thus is the scene set for a drama that picks up 20 years later with German reunification--when the now world-famous Adam returns to claim his aristocratic heritage (it includes, even, a real castle), intending, though, only to help and heal and celebrate the new Germany--not just by making yet another fairy-talesuccess movie about the nation but by creating a historical museum, a hostel, an immigration center, new film studios. And so what's to worry? How is the past going to rise up and smite Adam's hopes? And what will the deaths of Goebbels and Hitler, resurging neo-Nazi attacks on immigrants--or that student conference back in '68--have to do with any of it? All this--and more--will be narrated by the intelligent, droll, ex-psychoanalyst Milan Kubanicek, closest of Adam's friends--and holder of an extraordinary secret of his own. Intelligent history mixed into a high complexity of entertainment--and made riveting--by a master hand. -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Paperback: 277 pages
• Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux (June 15, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0374527687
• ISBN-13: 978-0374527686
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 6 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,679,944 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars King Arthur redux, March 3, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: In a Pig's Ear (Hardcover)

Paul Bryers weaves an engrossing story around the return of a successful Hollywood filmmaker (Adam Epstein) to Berlin - where he had been born in the horrific final days of WWII. It is now the late 1990s and a murky,unsettling and slightly sinister post-reunification Berlin serves as the background to a story of ambiguous parentage and personal redemption. A growing sense of menace (neo-Nazi activity flourishes, Adam is drawn into what appears to be an intricate web of deceit...) and the cooly ironic tone of the (Merlin-like)narrator combine to make this an above average 'literary' novel with thriller overtones.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Unique and Memorable, January 7, 2008

By 

Michael D. (Ontario, Canada) - See all my reviews

This review is from: In a Pig's Ear (Paperback)

I picked up In A Pig's Ear from a bargain bin at local book chain and have to say that it was one my most memorable reads. The author has a unique narrative style that provides a truly immersive text that is part fantasy, part thriller, part poetry. Definitely worth picking it up.