The Magnificent Boar

Katerina is a young lady and, sometimes, a bird. Against the serriform decor of her parental castle—with slight overtones of a past feudal order—father-margrave, mother, and their retinue display the cruelty and the narrow-mindedness that have since always plagued mankind. Katerina, however, is searching for a state of grace, and her thirst for fulfilling this wish is only abated by the exuberance of her governess, Odile, and by the embraces of a profound but unsettling love. Between Sun Terrace, the land of the most ardent joys, and Casa del Pasado, where only a trace of regret still remains of passed luxuriance and liveliness, the screams and whispers of a woman on the edge of passion turn tangled and confused. In her equal parts poetic and nostalgic, spell-like and dream-like stream-of-narrative, events and moods become conjoined and indistinct. They happen everywhere and nowhere, belong to everyone and, maybe, no one.  

 

"Péter Demény weaves this novel's entirely unique voice through a taut mixture of emotions and the mystical. The book's world, its subject, is both strange and-like anything exotic-bewitching, compelling, and, ultimately, immersive. Stylistically, the text seems baroque; it recalls the dense and rhapsodic character of living language. But its various allusions, leading each and every way, surround the reader, who, reaching the end, feels more thoroughly entertained than they first expected."

                                                                         —Várad

 

"Péter Demény has written his best prose work yet."

                                                                        —Élet és Irodalom

 

"Péter Demény's new volume of prose is the story—told from a feminine perspective—of a passion so deep that surviving without it could only result in shame."

                                                                      —Bárka

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