This is a very unusual book and a remarkable one, a book of which it could safely be said that it was, sooner or later, bound to be written. For Péter Esterházy is not only Hungary’s most prominent living novelist, but also a scion of the country’s most renowned family. And while he is an innovative and thoroughly modern writer, his name resonates with all the grandest traditions of Central European aristocracy. It was inevitable that he would one day bring his unique talent to bear on the subject that nobody else could unlock, or, as he put it himself, that the subject would find him in the end. But it is a meeting of opposites, and his is no straightforward family history. Those looking forward to a Hungarian version of The Leopard may feel disappointed.

The book is divided into two parts, entitled ‘Numbered Sentences from the Lives of the Esterházy Family’ and ‘Confessions of an Esterházy Family’, respectively. The first is a series of anecdotes plucked from the past and observations on how individual figures behaved, the second more of a narrative of its ups and downs during the 20th century.

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