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Laslo Bito. Abraham and Isaak: Roman nach der Bibel Paul Karpati, tr. Herne, Germany Tibor Schafer. 2000. 305 pages ISBN 3-933337-21-6
LASZLO BITO is a veritable polymath. He is a world-renowned scientist, recipient of many international prizes, among them the Proctor Medal, the highest award given for eye research (primarily for his path-breaking work in the treatment of glaucoma). Recently, having chosen an early retirement from Columbia University, where he was Professor of Ocular Physiology, Bito returned to the dreams of his youth and began to write fiction.
In his first novels, appearing in his native Hungarian, Bito addressed contemporary issues, focusing on life in Hungary during the first half of the twentieth century. After the defeat of the 1956 revolution, Bit6 (b. 1934) immigrated to the United States, where he completed his education and embarked on his scientific career. With latent autobiographical material in the text, Bit6 has created a body of novels that cannot be considered the work of a literary gentleman or the byproducts of leisure hours. Building on the European narrative tradition of past centuries, Bit6's fiction is...