Vendor
	Mohrbooks Literary Agency Sebastian Ritscher
Original language
English
Categories
Fiction & Related items

THE AFTERLIFE OF STARS

Joseph Kertes

The new novel by Canadian writer and National Jewish Book Award winner Joseph Kertes about a family of Hungarian Jews who escape from Hungary to Paris in the fall of 1956, as the Russians are invading Budapest in the wake of the Hungarian Revolution. It’s an unforgettable story about two young brothers that the writer Tim O’Brien says “reaches into your chest and takes hold of your heart and does not let it go.”

THE AFTERLIFE OF STARS tells the story of Hungarian brothers Robert and Atilla Beck as they flee the Russian troops rolling into into Budapest in 1956. They escape to the Paris townhouse of their great-aunt Hermina and as their country changes forever, these two boys transform as well, confronting danger and wonders previously unknown.

As they travel through minefields both real and imagined, Robert and Attila grapple with sibling rivalry, family secrets and incalculable loss. Along the way they encounter mysterious fellow travelers, bewildering sights of a nation in transition and surprising hilarity, all in pursuit of the one place they thought they'd lost forever: home.

I don’t want to spoil too much, but I can say that about 9,000 words were cut and it is a more streamlined and brisker read, better paced and modulated. No major plot points were changed, however, everything is more properly earned and connected. The traumatic event toward the end of the novel, and the denouement, are rendered believably and the full weight of the emotion is now felt.

THE AFTERLIFE OF STARS is a tale of perseverance, faith and the unbreakable bond of brotherhood.

Available products
Book Published 2017-01-01 by Little Brown
Book Published 2017-01-01 by Little Brown

Comments

Devastating yet unnervingly funny…. it’s not every writer who can render a scene like this with such verisimilitude so many years after the fact…. What is clear—and unquestionably lucky for us—is that Kertes’s memories survived his own family’s flight to Canada and have found expression in this inspired and deeply affecting novel. ‘I’m not asking for a story for the ages,’ Robert tells his Aunt Hermina. ‘I’m asking what happened to you.’ Kertes has given us both. Read more...

The Afterlife of Stars moved me more than any other novel I’ve read in recent memory. It hypnotizes. It delights. It shines on every page with a quiet, implacable, blanketing beauty—like a snowfall. Beyond all else, The Afterlife of Starsreaches into your chest and takes hold of your heart and does not let go, not even after the last page is turned. The Afterlife of Stars keeps shining on. What an exquisite novel.

A beautifully written story of brotherly love, family, and the intersection of history in the 20thcentury.

We meet the Beck brothers at the very moment history lays its claim on them. Their bond is sure to become one of literature’s great and sustaining relationships. Joseph Kertes writes with tremendous love for the idiosyncratic and passionate loyalties of family. With masterful concision, he expresses the trauma of an era. This is a book of remarkable scope and depth; unforgettable and deeply moving.

[A] fervent novel. Kertes (Gratitude, 2009), winner of the National Jewish Book Award, begins his newest work in his own native Budapest…. [protagonists] Robert and Attila are a winning pair of guides….Kertes’ voice is a lyrical one, and his work is frequently moving.

Part of what makes the book so compelling is its sympathetic portrayal of political refugees at a time when they are frequently misunderstood at best, and demonized at worst….the beating heart of this book is the relationship between Robert and Attila, a remarkable pair of brothers whose bond goes beyond affection, beyond shared history, beyond blood. They are two young men who, once met, you’ll never forget.

Kertes … delivers a fast-paced and taut narrative that captures how inscrutable the world’s cruelties can be to the children who witness them. Stirring and haunting, The Afterlife of Stars memorably shows how the bonds of brotherhood stay strong in a crisis.

[An] exquisitely moving novel … Kertes is a natural storyteller who creates vivid characters that resonate on the page.

The Afterlife of Stars blazes with every single good thing that a work of fiction ever does or could do. It is brilliant. Radiant.