The Book of Fathers by Miklós Vámos

The Book of Fathers

Miklós Vámos

Other Press 2009

 
While the point of this sprawling novel eludes me — is it that we should never forget the horrors of the past? — I can't help but be impressed by its scope. The story begins in 1705 with the first entry in The Book of Fathers, a journal passed from father to son through eleven generations of a Hungarian family: "The Lord be praised, we reached the village of Kos in the month of April in His Year of 1705. Five times in that year and in the year ...