My editor asked me to clarify a bit the historical events of Hungary that make the background of this novel. I’ll do it. Although I believe that the reader doesn’t really need this knowledge. I hope you can understand my story and heroes without having the faintest idea about Hungary or its past. Even if you aren’t sure Budapest or Bucharest is the Hungarian capital (the latter is in Romania), I think you could swim forward in this novel and experience what the figures had to survive (and what some of them, hélas, could not).

There are a few personal facts and I’d like to tell you first. Book of Fathers was my 20th book published in Hungary, and my 9th novel. Previously, I wrote one about my mother, thinking her character was very similar to that of the socialism as such. She was tyrannical, unfair, merciless, cruel, unpredictable—but at the same time, quite funny. I was born in 1950, grew up in the softer period of socialism, and that wasn’t humorless either. Anyway, after that I thought I owed my father one novel too. Unfortunately, he was a man who actually never spoke. He died when I was 19. Thus, I did not know much about him.

I decided to make some research. I traveled to the city of Pécs, in the Southern part of Hungary, where he was born and his family lived. In the archives I found a few enigmatic facts. My father had two brothers. His father was called Miklós Vámos. That Miklós Vámos, my grandpa, was born in Nagyvárad (now it’s Oradea Mare and belongs to Romania). He owned a quite big shoe shop in Pécs. His father, Mendel Weissberger was a kosher distiller in Budapest, but he was born in Homonna (now it’s Humenne and belongs to Slovakia). How and why ma grand-gandpa came to Budapest to distill here, and, in the meantime, how and why his son could be born in Nagyvárad? How and why my grandpa wound up in Pécs to open that shoe store? And what happened to the distillery? No answer.

My father spent more time in World War II than it actually lasted. He was already drafted a few times during the pre-war maneuvers of the Hungarian Army, invading ex-Hungarian territories which belonged to neighboring countries since the end of World War I. In the war, he was a member of a regular unit until the Jewish Laws, and after that a member of the weaponless Jewish forced labor company that was sent onto the mine fields in front of the German troops to “clean” their way towards Moscow. He was among the very few survivors. After the collapse of the front he was fleeing with others. Soviet troops captured him and without further investigation, he became a POW. He escaped with a friend, and practically walked home to Pécs. After that long promenade that took for a few months, he had to find out that his whole family was killed by the Nazis.

Ladies and Gentleman, I did not even know I was a Jew. When in the elementary school my classmates said anti-Semitic sentences, I followed their example, believing that Jew was just another four-letter word. In the high school, a girlfriend asked if I was a Jew. I said I was not. Thank god, I added. I asked my father about that, claming she called me a name, but I told I knew we had nothing to do with the Jews, indeed. My father pulled up on his front his specs, and then he said: “Well, I’m not so sure.” He gave no further explanation. That was the way I understood I was a Jew in fact. Ever since then—I’m not so sure. In my childhood, I never heard at home about Jews or anything related. Moreover, I do not speak Hebrew or Yiddish, I don’t know the habits, the eating rules, the prayers. Nevertheless, any time there is an anti-Semitic situation, I must be a Jew, and with this family background it’s morally obligatory. “If you ever forget you are a Jew, a Gentile will remind you,” as we all know.

Let’s get back to my father. Later, somehow he became a secretary of a minister, László Rajk, who became the main victim of a showcase trial and was executed. My father was lucky that he was left out of the trial. He worked for seven year as an untrained hand miller in a factory. Then he got ill with his heart, and after a long period of in and out of hospital, died. That’s all I could rake in, so I had to recognize this would not be enough stuff for a novel about him.

What shall I do? I was angry. OK, if I’m unable to write a novel about my dad, why don’t I write one about every Hungarian father? I picked 100 of them, famous and unknown men, and started to collect their biographies. But that seemed a but boring. Then came the idea to choose 12 of them who represent the 12 astronomical signs—that would cover every Hungarian male. In the Hungarian text in each chapter the first name of the central character starts with the same letter as his sign. The “vignettes” that introduce the chapters try to create the mood of the one-month period of the given sign, and the sentences were collected from old Hungarian calendars and yearbooks.

I described the life of 12 first born sons of one family, the first is the father of the second, and so on, throughout 12 generations. This gave a solid and simple structure, and, I hope, the reader can easily go with the plot even if it’s complicated. The Jewish name of the family is Stern, and the Hungarian is Csillag (both mean ‘star’). I knew that the last scene of the novel should be the solar eclipse that happened on August 11, 1999 since that was about the most beautiful spectacle I have ever seen. I was looking for another one in about 300 years ago, and I found it. Thus, the time frame of the novel was given, and this is how it grew into a Hungarian family saga.

Many readers in Hungary (and a few in Germany) wrote me letters, claiming they were envious because I knew so well the story of my ancestors. I wish I really knew it. However, as it is already clear for you, I have known almost nothing. I invented a complete family, because I lost the real one. But I am proud when the reader believes he gets the story of my clan.

The Hungarian noblemen and the intelligentsia spoke French and German until the beginning of the nineteenth century. The poor only used our language, and many words did not exist at all. One of the nicest chapters of the history of Hungarian culture is the so-called Language Reform. Writers, poets and linguists decided to improve Hungarian language, and, in a few years, invented many-many new words. A very high percentage of the modern Hungarian vocabulary was created by them. This fact made me think that it would be interesting if I could use in every chapter only the words and expressions of the period in question. In chapter I., II. and III., until we reach the beginning of the 1800th, that is, the period of the language reformers (one of them became a protagonist of mine), I used only such words that existed by then. I know that no translator can recreate this in indo-European languages since you had no such movement. Peter Sherwood did his best so you still can feel how the language of the novel gets gradually “younger” as time flies.

I spent a few years in the United States in the late eighties, and I made friends with quite a number of Americans. They loved and trusted me so they believed me when I told them I was a (good?) novelist. I am extremely excited about the English publication of Book of Fathers because now I may show them this novel at last. Can I prove them what I was saying, too? I’m praying.