Peter Nadas’s ‘Parallel Stories’ is colossally ambitious. Set in Hungary of 1961 and extending to the falling of the Iron Curtain, it encapsulates an entire civilization.
The Art of Asking Your Boss for a Raise
By George Perec, translated by David Bellos
Verso, $16.95, 96 pages
Courtesy of The World Odessit Club
For almost a decade now, [New Directions Publishing][1] has doggedly been bringing the late, late Hungarian modernist László Krasznahorkai’s novels of impassioned decrepitude and finely cadenced apocalypticism into English. Next year will see the much-anticipated translation of his “Satantango.” To tide us over until then we now have the publication in the Cahiers Writing and Translation series of “AnimalInside,” his collaboration with German Jewish neo-expressionist painter Max Neumann.