Kornel Esti (Ndp; 1194)

Each of these stories displays a mastery of texture, nuance, and pacing that is absolutely first rate.--Christopher Byrd

A tender comedy tinged with the absurdity of life, the thrill of sociability, and the imminence of death, which I guess is exactly the kind of book I like.--Chad Harbach (12/09/2011)

Kosztolányi was a ringleader in the 20th-century flowering of Hungarian literature, a poet who reformed the language, and a fiction writer of world class.

One of the most important and glittering writers of a Hungarian golden age, Kosztolányi is multicolored and ineffable, like a rainbow. At the end of his life, the virtuoso Kornél Esti appears.--Peter Esterházy

Crazy, funny and gorgeously dark, Kornél Esti sets into rollicking action a series of adventures about a man and his wicked dopplegänger, who breathes every forbidden idea of his childhood into his ear, and then reappears decades later.Part Gogol, part Chekhov, and all brilliance, Kosztolányi in his final book serves up his most magical, radical, and intoxicating work. Here is a novel which inquires: What if your id (loyally keeping your name) decides to strike out on its own, cuts a disreputable swath through the world, and then sends home to you all its unpaid bills and ruined maidens? And then: What if you and your alter ego decide to write a book together?