A Guest in My Own Country: A Hungarian Life

by George Konrád

Winner of the 2007 National Jewish Book Award in the category of Biography, Autobiography & Memoir
A powerful memoir of war, politics, literature, and family life by one of Europe's leading intellectuals.
When George Konrad was a child of eleven, he, his sister, and two cousins managed to flee to Budapest from the Hungarian countryside the day before deportations swept through his home town. Ultimately, they were the only Jewish children of the town to survive the Holocaust.
A Guest in My Own Country recalls the life of one of Eastern Europe's most accomplished modern writers, beginning with his survival during the final months of the war. Konrad captures the dangers, the hopes, the betrayals and courageous acts of the period through a series of carefully chosen episodes that occasionally border on the surreal (as when a dead German soldier begins to speak, attempting to justify his actions).
The end of the war launches the young man on a remarkable career in letters and politics. Offering lively descriptions of both his private and public life in Budapest, New York, and Berlin, Konrad reflects insightfully on his role in the Hungarian Uprising, the notion of "internal emigration" - the fate of many writers who, like Konrad, refused to leave the Eastern Bloc under socialism - and other complexities of European identity. To read A Guest in My Own Country is to experience the recent history of East-Central Europe from the inside.

Genres: History, Hungary, Nonfiction, Biography, Memoir, War, Autobiography

ebook

First published April 17, 2007

About the author

aka György Konrád

George Konrád was a Hungarian novelist and essayist. Konrád was born in Berettyóújfalu, near Debrecen into an affluent Jewish family. He graduated in 1951 from the Madách Secondary School in Budapest, entered the Lenin Institute and eventually studied literature, sociology and psychology at Eötvös Loránd University. In 1956 he participated in the Hungarian Uprising against the Soviet occupation.

Reviews

[Lisa Lieberman · Rating 5 out of 5]

As a Jewish child growing up in Horthy's Hungary, Konrád narrowly escaped deportation to Auschwitz and survived the siege of Budapest, amid starvation, bombardment, and summary executions by the fascist Arrow Cross. He came of age during the hard-line Communist Rakosi era, was persecuted as a bourgeois (read: Jew) counter-revolutionary, and took part in the failed 1956 revolution. After the Soviet tanks rolled in, he chose not to flee the country, as so many of his fellow writers did, but stayed to work as a social worker in impoverished rural areas. His work was banned because it revealed that all was not well in the People's Republic and he lived under house arrest for more than a decade, emerging in 1989 as one of Hungary's leading voices of reconciliation.

Just one quotation, to give you a sense of the guy: "We can use literature to be hard on our fellow humans, but if we truly learn to read we can use it to forgive them and revel in their beauty. Since my gimnázium days, I have believed that the constant discussion of substantive texts is what keeps humanity going."

[Donna · Rating 2 out of 5]

This memoir follows the author, George Konrad - a Hungarian Jew, from his pre-war childhood, through the war, through communist Hungary, up to the present. The first part of the book is quite linear, telling of the Holocaust, the separation of his family and how they managed to survive. He tells this in snapshots - short scenes of life at the time.

Whilst his life certainly was an interesting one, I found his story (particularly the second part) to be quite jumbled and non-coherent at times. He seems to get lost in asides, and this really distracts from what it going on and leads to confusion. At the end of the first part, for example, he skims over the fact that his parents returned from a work camp alive, even though there was a lot of build up to this - it seemed quite anti-climatic. However, he was able to describe in great detail what strangers looked like whilst eating in a bar/restaurant on a single occasion. He did go back to cover his parents' return in part 2, but it was a good while later, and it was narrated quite matter-of-factly rather than described in any great narrative detail.

Overall, I found this book lacked any real descriptive quality. It seems evident that it was written by a man in his later years - he was distant from the event that occurred. This doesn't mean that you don't feel for what he went through, it just lacked some depth compared to some of the other similar memoirs out there.

[Erakil · Rating 5 out of 5]

George Konrad is a world-famous author and essayist and former President of International PEN. He survived the Nazi holocaust as a child, and was a dissident under the Soviet-run Hungarian government until that government fell.

A wonderful book to read, especially for people grew up in Hungary after
the Holocaust. The translation is very good, but the original
Hungarian version is better. I do not blame the translator, because it is
almost impossible to translate the rich language of Konrad. The book is
a bit shorter version of originally two novels. The first novel
is the story how the author survived the holocaust and the second novel is Konrad's life story later. His main question is where is home,
where is the motherland? The answer is may be memories and the language
what connect people to a country.

[Julie · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was interested in this memoir because of my Hungarian in laws.
It is divided in 2 parts - the first focuses on the author's experiences as a young Jewish boy growing up in the Hungarian country side and his flight to Budapest and several other locales, trying to avoid the Nazis. I found this part very interesting - he has the ability to show things through a child's eyes.
The second part follows him through adult life as an intellectual and author attempting to live under Communist rule and on through the fall of Communism. I found this part somewhat disjointed and less interesting than the first one.
I give it 3 stars for the first part which is worth it on its
own.

[Lori · Rating 3 out of 5]

The story is a very interesting one. This was originally published as 2 books in Hungarian, the first one being about his childhood as a Jewish boy in Hungary, the 2nd about his later years as a writer and intellectual under the communist regime. The problem is that he jumps around a lot and it can be hard to keep track of the storyline and the characters. His early story is a very painful one of watching the Nazis take over and he and his sister being the only Jewish children from his village to survive. It may be in part the translation, but I did find that his fairly matter-of-fact telli8ng of the story made it easier to read. He was very unemotional in the telling.

[Teresa · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good commentary of being Jewish and a child during World War II in Hungary. Love his cantor about the reality of the situation and his ability not to gloss over the negative points. Does jump around a bit, from past to present to incidents that happen before the beginning of the story. Parts are difficult to read.

[Melanie Redford · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a recomendation from another website and i wasnt sure but gave it ago anyway. I ended up really liking it.
Its hard to say you really enjoy something when the content is
so harsh but the almost comedic surrealism in its approach makes the events bearable to read about.

[Patricia · Rating 3 out of 5]

Part one, about his childhood in Hungary during World War I, is riveting if sometimes hard to follow. Part two, about his later life, including the Hungarian Revolution, doesn't hang together as a narrative.

[Ar · Rating 2 out of 5]

While the book overall is an interesting read and quite insightful in some places, it is not always easy to follow and some readers may find it harder to read than others for several reasons.

First, the book is a translation from the Hungarian and there are some grammatical errors and typos in the book, as well as some odd recurrences, in that people are almost always "shot dead" rather than simply "shot" or simply "dead"; nothing overly bothersome, but still noticeable and potentially annoying depending on the reader.

Second, the book is divided into two parts, with each "part" divided into sectional bursts as short as one paragraph or as long as three or four-pages. These parts do not necessarily follow each other in terms of historical timeline or story. So if you are looking for a clear, linear, easy-to-follow, yet personal and descriptive, historical account of life from pre-WW2 to post-communist Hungary, you may find this book a bit hard to get through, and in some places down-right annoying!

The book also gets more philosophical towards the end (more Ernest Hemingway-esque if you wish), with short reflective sentences in quick succession, like: "I dash out of the house into the meadow. You cannot see this spot from the village. I stop and turn around. The vast emptiness is refreshing - the surrounding hills, the ruins of a castle sacked three hundred years ago, the solitude. There is no one here in the bright noon light. It is no effort at all for me simply to be". Again, not a problem per se if you like that kind of writing or these kinds of books.

The book is insightful in some parts, although I'm not sure what recounting some of his sexual adventures and thoughts brings to the story, other than a basic idea of `live and love life and the women in it, sleep with the pretty ones that are willing to sleep with you, and do not be tied down by marriage' (though he was married 3 times); a physical and intellectual coming-of-age and his related reflections on this transformation perhaps?

Overall, I was expecting a more linear or sequential story of his life and adventures (maybe some chapters?!). His stories come through by the end, or as you piece them together yourself, but I found it to be a harder book to follow than necessary and not very well organized. Other than the parts where he describes his ordeals/adventures in Budapest as the remnants of the German Army are pushed back, I would not really label it a captivating page-turner, but still interesting enough to read from a later-in-life philosophical perspective.

If you are not Hungarian, are planning to travel to Hungary, and/or wanted to get a bird's eye view of what Hungary or Hungarians are like as a people or culture, this may not be the book for you.

On the product itself (the paperback edition), it has excellent quality binding and paper, with a crisp clear print in average-sized letters causing no eye strain. Amazon lists it as 352 pages, but the totality of the story is +/-300 pages.

[Chris Wares · Rating 5 out of 5]

When I first picked up this book I didn’t take to it. I wasn’t in the mood for it.

But second time round I loved this. Konrad’s memoires feel like memoires - snapshots of life that are sometimes important life events and sometimes simple reminiscences.

He gives a personal account of Jewish life in Hungary through the ‘40s and beyond.

I found the first half of the book describing life in small town Hungary the most interesting. His family had to put up with low level antisemitism before the war but the war brought new terrors. His family endured the yellow stars, the forced labour, the deportations to Auschwitz and the efforts to escape the Nazis, the ever decreasing circles of the Budapest ghetto and the Battle of Budapest. Konrad and his parents survived only to find their home desecrated and much of their family and friends dead.

[Amber · Rating 4 out of 5]

Odd formatting with the entire book in two parts but no chapters. This made the book harder to follow…

Incredibly enlightening and difficult story of a Jewish boy surviving incredible odds during a time of terror in Hungary.
The first half of the book is harrowing. The second half seems more scattered as if a personal history after that year of near misses with death and trying to make sense of life after that.

For one wanting to understand Hungarian history more this was worthwhile but not the easiest translated book to read.

[K · Rating 4 out of 5]

What an interesting book--the experiences of a child before, during, and particularly after WW2, as Hungary adjusted to life under a Communist regime. This book gives the reader a taste of how changeable life can be, and how circumstances may dramatically change the life one planned for oneself.

[Gypsy Lady]

To read A Guest in My Own Country is to experience the recent history of East-Central Europe from the inside.

[Katie · Rating 4 out of 5]

good memoir. Still reading, but I needed something lighter, so put it aside for a bit.

[Lily Bond · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sad and fascinating.

[Velvetink]

tuebl?