Shimmering Details, Volume II

In Shimmering Details, Volume II, Péter Nádas delves deeper into his and his parents’ lives during the tumultuous years spanning the rise of Hungarian communism in 1948 to the brutal suppression of the 1956 uprising. Zeroing in on this critical period—which overlapped with the formative years of his childhood—Nádas concludes his monumental history of a family whose own experiences and fortunes are deeply intertwined with two centuries of Hungarian history.

This second volume is a composite portrait of life lived at the nexus of world-historical forces—a jewel—like study that holds up different facets of the human experience to the light of Nádas’s singular prose style. What emerges is a memoir of unusual insight and exceptional power. Hailed by Deborah Eisenberg as an “extraordinary writer,” Nádas has confirmed his place among Europe’s greatest living authors.