Célia

A family novel about what families lack, set in the Hungary and Budapest of today and the recent past, among aggressive advertising and pointless services. Its narrator, a man, finds out decades late that he has, by accident, become a father, and so his daughter Célia, now in her early twenties, comes into his life. He is expected to help someone he hardly knows, and in doing so he catches sight of how foreign his own life has become. In the story he tells, the two most important characters are women. The book is about attraction and repulsion, the search for happiness and the loneliness of people living side by side, rebellion and freedom, the importance of examples, and what can be handed on between generations and what is bound to break off.

AI-generated summary

About the book

Form

Novel

Length

312 pages in the original

Genres

Family (assigned by AI)

Set in

Hungary

First published

2017 by Magvető

Author's age

67 when first published

ISBN

9789631435245 (original)