Péter Náda's memoirs begin with a Sunday lunch at Grandpa Tauber's but unfold into a vivid depiction of what it is like to grow up in a Jewish family during Nazism and Communism.
- It was not easy, and it is not easy.
But no one has promised us that life would be easy.
Life is very complicated and sometimes very dangerous.
It is a great world of experience and I did not want to die without having written about it, says Péter Nádas.
Discovered his Judaism as an eight-year-old
Peter Nada was born in 1942 and grew up in occupied Budapest during World War II.
In the book, he remembers his parents, convinced communists - who both die when he is young.
And he remembers his Jewish family - he himself learns that he is a Jew only when he is eight years old.
In detailed memoirs and an associative flow, he describes what will become a writing life in a Europe marked by anti-Semitism and in the shadow of the great ideologies.
- We have different kinds of memories: the spontaneous and the forced.
With the forced memories, one seldom succeeds well.
You succeed better when you remember something by chance, then it starts when the river of memories comes, says Péter Nádas.
Found in Hungarian schools
In the late 60's, after working as a journalist and photographer, Péter Náda was banned from publishing.
His great breakthrough came with the second novel The Book of Memoirs, 1986 and today Péter Nádas counts as one of the great Central European authors.
But a few years ago, his books from the Hungarian schools were deleted from compulsory reading lists.
The same thing happened to several other Jewish writers - including Nobel Laureate Imre Kertész.
- That is not right.
It's party politicization, it's one - party politicization.
It has nothing to do with democracy.
But on the other hand, being compulsory reading is not very good either.
Children hate compulsory books, they do not read them, says Péter Nádas.