The End

A serpentine maze of memory and artistic obsession in post-war communist Hungary told in bold experimental style and perfect for fans of Helen DeWitt Nothing approximates death as closely as photography. Unspooling like a roll of film, The End captures in frames of language the faces and places of András’ memory, which together form a fever-dream collage of an artist’s psyche. In a small town in communist Hungary, András Szabad’s childhood comes to an abrupt end with his father’s return from prison and the death of his loving mother. In search of new beginnings, András moves with his father to Budapest, where he discovers a passion for photography, for uncovering the invisible through the visible, and for fixing matter and memory so as to ward them against the inevitability of time. An unorthodox first encounter brings András together with Éva, and soon they become entangled in a psychosexual relationship of consuming passion, but also bitterness and resentment. With vibrant precision and fluid dialogue, Attila Bartis blends a sprawling family saga with 20th-century European history and offers an unflinchingly lucid yet boundlessly compassionate account of psychological devastation under authoritarianism.