Own Death

by Peter Nadas

Translated from the Hungarian by Janos Salamon

A man relates his inner-most thoughts and reflections as he suffers a heart attack on the street and is then brought back to life after three and a half minutes. It is a compelling tale of something appalling and yet completely ordinary, of pain and fear and acceptance, whilst walking the thin dividing line between life and death.

In contrast to the speed of this near-death experience, the book incluldes a series of photographs in which the passage of time is hardly apparent. Over the course of a year the author photographed a wild pear tree in his garden at different times of the day and year, recording its changes under the differing light conditions.

Own Death contrasts perceptions of the here and now with the hereafter, and its complex composition alludes to mortal time and its passage.

(From Publisher)

Péter Nádas, born in Budapest, Hungary in 1942, worked as a press photographer before he became a writer. His first book of stories was published in 1967 and his best-selling novel, A Book of Memories, was published in 1986. Nádas is counted among the most important authors of our time and is the recipient of numerous prizes including the Prize for European Literature from the Austrian Government, the Leipzig Book Prize, and the Kossuth Prize