In Light of Chaos

Jeffrey Canton is Programming Co-ordinator at the Toronto Public
Library.

Szabados’s book is an evocative fictional autobiography that combines
a political/historical chronicle of post-World War II Europe with a
poignant coming-of-age story.

Beginning in 1943 and ending in 1968, the novel is a moving personal
and cultural journey that deftly leads the reader through the chaos of
growing up in Hungary under the Nazis, to the Soviet invasion in 1956;
escape to a war-ravaged Austria; and immigration to Canada, to the
“Paris of North America,” Montreal. Like Béla, the reader must come
to terms with the fact that cultures clash the world over in the
mid-twentieth century.

His father’s unexpected death, wartime food shortages and postwar
hoarding, and Béla’s burgeoning adolescent sexuality are mixed
together in this finely wrought narrative. Béla’s story, and that of
his family, is related with wide-eyed objectivity, poignant humor, and a
fine-tuned literary sensibility. Short episodic vignettes characterize
the novel’s stark narrative style—bursts of imagination that carry
the reader along with the sense of discovery Béla experiences.

Part childhood idyll, part historical memoir, Szabados’s first novel
is an innovative and exhilarating achievement.