The City BuilderAn architect in an unnamed city considers his life, his work, and the many-layered history of the city he and his family--architects all--have contributed to building. In the days after World War II--during which American bombers destroyed much of what his father built--he becomes a Stalinist planner and realizes that the power of the nobility, the wealthy and the bourgeois has been usurped by technocrats. Vanished by those technocrats into the communist underworld of torture and imprisonment, he is eventually released into a post-Stalinist world and becomes the chief builder in a provincial town. Told with wit and elegance by one of Hungary's greatest novelists, The City Builder is one of the most important and impassioned books about the indignities of living in--and contributing to--a cruelly depersonalized society. |
Contents
Section 1 | 3 |
Section 2 | 21 |
Section 3 | 53 |
Section 4 | 75 |
Section 5 | 89 |
Section 6 | 103 |
Section 7 | 139 |
Section 8 | 153 |
Section 9 | 165 |
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amid arms baroque become blow body build burning CARLOS FUENTES Central Central Europe Central European church City Builder city planner civil society crack DALKEY ARCHIVE dead death door dreams electric chair everything existence eyes face father fear feel feet fingers flesh freedom front garden George Konrád Gestapo glass guard hair hand head horses human Hungarian Hungary idiot iron Iron Curtain keep laugh lean legs light live longer look loudspeaker machine main square memory ment mind Moctezuma monism morning mother mouth murderers night novel official peace prison pulled reality shirt smell smile someone Soviet Soviet Union stand stone street streetcar stretch testicles thighs things tiny tion trains tree tumbrels turn Utopia waiting walk wall want a city watch window woman words