Description
Book SynopsisIn 1705 Kornel Csillag''s grandfather happens across a miraculous gold fob-watch gleaming in the mud of an ancient Magyar battlefield, which is to improve dramatically his family''s shipwrecked fortunes - for the timepiece bestows an unexpected gift on succeeding generations of male Csillags: the gift of seeing. And each clairvoyant first-born son in turn passes down the Book of Fathers, a battered folio in which the family records its astonishing and revelatory visions and which takes in three hundred years of Csillag history, bearing vivid witness to holocaust and wedding feast alike.
Headlong, exuberant, riotous and packed tight with stories, jokes and tragedy, THE BOOK OF FATHERS is an irresistibly rich Central European feast of a book - parable, folk-tale and epic all rolled into one - that is set to become a European classic.
Trade Review** 'A superb family saga that draws the reader effortlessly through nearly three centuries of turbulent history ... The characters are fascinating and Vamos's writing is a magnificent, seamless blend of the general and the personal * THE TIMES *
** 'A warm, humorous, courageous story ... a wonderful reading experience. Highly recommended, especially for lovers of Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude * HISTORICAL NOVELS REVIEW *
** 'Intricately structured and enigmatically imaginative . . . The book is shot through with ideas about music, nationality, astrology, Judaism, and a troublesome relationship with time. Massive in scale but intimate in tone, the novel oscillates between a kind of ornate folk-tale roughness and a lighter yet more sombre beauty * DAILY TELEGRAPH *
