Tranquility

(Paperback)

Publishing Details

Classifications

Physical Properties

Description

Andor Weer, a 36-year-old writer, lives in a small apartment with his reclusive mother, Rebeka, who was once among the most celebrated stage actresses in Budapest. Unable to withstand her maniacal tyranny but afraid to leave her alone, he finds himself caught in a web of bitter interdependence which spirals into a Sartrian hell of hatred, lies and appeasement. Tranquility is a living seismograph of the internal quakes and ruptures of a mother and son trapped within an Oedipal nightmare amidst the suffocating totalitarian embrace of Communist Hungary. A masterwork.

Reviews

Winner ofThree Percents Best Translated Book Award 2009

Reading like the bastard child of Thomas Bernhard and Elfriede Jelinek, Tranquility is political and personal suffering distilled perfectly and transformed into dark, viscid beauty. It is among the most haunted, most honest, and most human novels I have ever read. Brian Evenson

A venerableeven Endgame-ishaddition to the literature of unhappy families. Rivka Galchen

With impressive force of language, Bartis succeeds in laying bare the ambivalences of his characters, their love-hate relationships and self destructive energies . . . The play that mother and son perform . . . is part Strindberg and part Chekhov, but mostly sheer Beckett or even pure theater of cruelty. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung

Oddly beautiful and unsettling, the novel boldly illustrates the lengths people go to in securing their own private hells. Publishers Weekly (Starred Review)

Author Bio

Attila Bartis, born in Targu Mures (Marosvasarhely), Romania, has been hailed by readers across Europe as one of the most highly inventive Central European literary mavericks writing today. After completing his degree in photography, Bartis published his first novel A Seta in 1995 along with a collection of short stories. He has also been awarded the Tibor Dery Prize and the Sandor Marai Prize in 2001 for Tranquility (A nyugalom). He lives in Budapest. Tranquility is his first novel to appear in English. Imre Goldstein has translated from the Hungarian A Book of Memories, The End of a Family Novel, Love, Fire and Knowledge, and A Lovely Tale of Photography by Peter Nadas, A Feast in the Garden by Gy rgy Konrad, The House of Sorel by Pal Salamon, as well as many plays, stories, poems, and essays from both Hungarian and Hebrew. He received a PhD in drama from CUNY and has written and directed many plays. Goldstein has also published several collections of poetry and a novel, November Spring (Novemberi tavasz).