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Pal Zavada. Jadviga parnaja. Budapest. Magveto. 1997. 446 pages. 1,290 Ft. ISBN 96-14-20760.
In 1997, from virtual obscurity, the forty-five-year-old Pal Zavada, a former sociologist, blazed across the
Hungarian literary firmament like a comet. His main opus, Jadviga parnaja (Jadviga's Pillow), became an instant best seller, a rather unexpected phenomenon, because it was serious, dense, classical prose replete with powerful images and linguistic bravura, a rather scarce word-product nowadays.
The bulk of the book is the diary of a prosperous farmer, Andras Osztatni, chronicling the tragic circumstances of how his and many other lives go awry during his marriage (1915-22) and over the ensuing decades down to 1987. Although actual people are also featured and the historical and geographic background serves as a reliable documentary of the era, the journal is fictional and highly personal. The main story is of Andras's hectic, ill-fated union to the mysterious Jadviga, who despite her professed attraction and her lovelorn husband's relentless, desperate wooing, refuses to consummate...