A biographical novel in the grand European literary tradition that spans multiple generations and three centuries of tumultuous Central European history, as witnessed by the Esterhazys, a leading Hungarian family. The Esterhazys, one of Europe's most prominent aristocratic families, are indelibly inscribed in the history of the Hapsburg Empire. Having gone through epic conquest, tragedy, triumph and near destruction, the Esterhazy family lore is rich, poignant, entertaining and awe-inspiring. Celestial Harmonies is a national epic in the form of fiction, which Esterhazy writes by reinventing the traditional form of the dynastic saga. Beginning with short sections narrated in the first person, Celestial Harmonies recounts legends, inventions and episodes that form a mosaic in which chronology is abandoned and only one prominent figure exists: 'My Father'. The character of 'My Father' is a Don Juan, a profligate, a tycoon and a scholar, a bishop, an architect, a madman and a tyrant, an envoy and a premier, a student of Helmholtz and the cat in Schrodinger's experiment. He stands for each and every family member, functioning as a mount for simply everything, a man as unlimited and inexhaustible as the power born by the book's fictional family. Celestial Harmonies is a rich, dazzlingly original exploration of the emotional ties that bind men to their fathers, bonds that stand outside time, place and history. Old world glamour meets harsh post-war reality in a novel that touches on all aspects of life and philosophy relevant to us today -- the nature of dictatorship, love, hate and family relationships, to meditations on betrayal, God and Christianity.

Celestial Harmonies

Literature & Fiction

Péter Esterházy

Contemporary

Flamingo

Paperback. Pub Date :2005-01-17 Pages: 880 Language: English Publisher: Harper Perennial A biographical novel in the grand European literary tradition that spans multiple generations and three centuries of tumultuous Central European history. as witnessed by the Esterhazys. a leading Hungarian family.The Esterhazys. one of Europes most prominent aristocratic families. are indelibly inscribed in the history of the Hapsburg Empire.Having gone through epic conquest. tragedy. triumph and near destruction. the Esterhazy family lore is rich. poignant. entertaining and awe -inspiring. 'Celestial Harmonies' is a national epic in the form of fiction. which Esterhazy writes by reinventing the traditional form of the dynastic saga.Beginning with short sections narrated in the first person. 'Celestial Harmonies' recounts legends. inventions and episodes that form a mosaic in which chron...

Harperperennial

′I WILL WRITE ABOUT ALL THAT IN MORE DETAIL LATER.′ The final sentence of Helping Verbs of the Heart - was it a promise, a threat, a quote? In 1985, when Péter Esterházy′s book came out on unnumbered, black-edged pages, this much-cited sentence seemed most likely to be the manifestation of authorial posturing. After the publication of his books on his father Celestial Harmonies and Revised Edition, this sentence and the preceding book on his mother′s death, broken up into auxiliary verbs, now gain new meaning twenty-three years later in Not Art. Not Art is the book of the reawakened mother, a mother who knows the offside rule, and whose language, which determines her relationship to the world, is the language of football. The son only exists in relation to it, just as everything and everyone else only exists in relation to this mother′s football language. Football, in the author′s last book a stage and a medium for private historiography, now acts as a worldview, its roots in his relationship to his mother and his mother tongue: a mother′s language complex. Readers seeking ′family stories′ will find them - in subtly written, rounded stories. Those looking for emotions will find them too: platonic love, marital love filled with tenderness, and of course love for his mother and father. And those interested in the esterházyesque auto-reflexive textual world (where does the author begin and end) will not be disappointed either.

Not Art: A Novel

United States

Ecco

Winner of the 2004 German Publishers and Booksellers Association Peace Prize Named a New York Times Notable Book of 1994 Winner of 1995 The New York Times Review Notable Books An elaborate, elegant homage to the great Czech storyteller Bohumil Hrabal (author of Closely Watched Trains), The Book of Hrabal is also a farewell to the years of communism in Eastern Europe and a glowing paean to the mixed blessings of domestic life. Anna, blues-singing housewife and mother of three, addresses her reminiscences and reflections to Hrabal. They swing from domestic matters, to accounts of the injustices suffered by her family during the Stalinist 1950s and the police harassment in subsequent years, to her husband's crazy ideas. He frets over his current project, a book celebrating Hrabal, but seems unable to write it. Meanwhile, two angels, undercover as secret policemen, shadow the household-communicating via walkie-talkie-to prevent Anna from aborting her fourth child. God himself (aka Bruno) enters the scene; he chats with Hrabal, takes saxophone lessons from an irreverent Charlie Parker (unfortunately even this doesn't cure his tone-deaf ear), and tries to play the saxophone to dissuade her from ending the pregnancy.

The Book of Hrabal

Quartet Books

Fancsisko und Pinta.

Literary

Berliner Taschenbuch-Verl.

Eine Frau

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Books by Péter Esterházy