The Afterlife of Stars

De: Joseph Kertes

Narrado por: Tristan Morris

As Russian tanks roll through the cobblestone streets of Budapest and shots ring out, young Robert and Attila Beck, inseparable brothers, peer from the boot of a toppled statue of Stalin at the first grisly signs of revolution. The year is 1956. That October day, Russian soldiers will storm their family home, prompting the boys' hurried escape from the city with their parents, grandmother, and two cousins. Not all will survive. Their immediate destination is Paris, and the town house of Hermina, their great-aunt, once a renowned opera singer, now a recluse who wears long gloves to preserve her dignity against a past scarred by an unspeakable violence.

Along the way, these two brothers encounter mysterious fellow travelers, witness the bewildering sights of a nation in transition, and grapple with rivalry and loss, while never losing their capacity for joy or their appreciation of humor, and each other, as they stare down the unaccountable and the absurd. Robert, the younger, idolizes the fiery Attila, whose growing edge of anger and rebellion threatens to endanger them both. As exiles in Paris, they seek adventure and whatever semblance of home they might find, from the unfamiliar streets to the labyrinthine sewers beneath. When the duo uncovers a long-held family secret involving a double agent and a daring Holocaust rescue, this novel hurtles toward its cataclysmic conclusion. A fleeting decision by Attila has consequences that will last a lifetime, and the bond that has proved unbreakable may be the brothers' undoing.

With dazzling storytelling and a firm belief in the power of humor in the face of turmoil, Joseph Kertes has crafted a fierce saga of identity and love that resonates through its final page. The Afterlife of Stars is not only a stirring account of one displaced family's possibilities for salvation, but also an extraordinary tale of the singular and enduring ties of brotherhood.

"Devastating yet unnervingly funny.... inspired and deeply affecting....a story for the ages."-Julie Orringer, New York Times Book Review

"The Afterlife of Stars moved me more than any other novel I've read in recent memory."-Tim O'Brien

Reseñas de la Crítica

"Devastating yet unnervingly funny....it's not every writer who can render a scene like this with such verisimilitude so many years after the fact....What is clear--and unquestionably lucky for us--is that Kertes's memories survived his own family's flight to Canada and have found expression in this inspired and deeply affecting novel. 'I'm not asking for a story for the ages,' Robert tells his Aunt Hermina. 'I'm asking what happened to you.' Kertes has given us both."
—Julie Orringer, New York Times Book Review

"The Afterlife of Stars is Joseph Kertes's masterpiece. Robert Beck, the young narrator, is absolutely captivating (and very funny!) as he takes us along on his terrifying journey."
—Miriam Toews, two-time Giller Prize finalist for All My Puny Sorrows and A Complicated Kindness

"The Afterlife of Stars moved me more than any other novel I've read in recent memory. It hypnotizes. It delights. It shines on every page with a quiet, implacable, blanketing beauty-like a snowfall. Beyond all else, The Afterlife of Stars reaches into your chest and takes hold of your heart and does not let go, not even after the last page is turned. The Afterlife of Stars keeps shining on. What an exquisite novel."—Tim O'Brien, National Book Award-winning author of The Things They Carried

"The Afterlife of Stars is tender in its evocation of fierceness and wrenching in its rendering of two brothers' hunger to penetrate both the wonders and the awful secrets of a world that always seems just out of reach. It's memorably sad and surprisingly funny on the elusiveness of home and the intensity of family bonds."
—Jim Shepard, author of The Book of Aron

"We meet the Beck brothers at the very moment history lays its claim on them. Their bond is sure to become one of literature's great and sustaining relationships. Joseph Kertes writes with tremendous love for the idiosyncratic and passionate loyalties of family. With masterly concision, he expresses the trauma of an era. This is a book of remarkable scope and depth; unforgettable and deeply moving."—Anne Michaels, Fugitive Pieces

"The Afterlife of Stars blazes with every single good thing that a work of fiction ever does or could do. It is brilliant. Radiant."—Richard Bausch, PEN/Malamud Award-winning author of Peace

"Agony, humor, and a boy's bewilderment and wonder coalesce in this glittering novel. Joseph Kertes evokes a vanishing culture with poignancy and love. His boy-narrator is a marvelous creation."
—D. M. Thomas, Man Booker Prize finalist for The White Hotel

Good story throughout.

Every moment offered a surprise and a moment of fascination. Humor and not-humor were in every chapter. This is a very good accomplishment.

Aftermath of 1956

The narration was so painful that I cannot believe I listened to it for seven hours. The narrator affected what was supposed to be a Hungarian Jewish accent, and which sounded like a mishmash of Eastern European accents, largely Czech. Toward the end of the book, it became clear that he cannot even pronounce French! Why did no one coach him? It would have been better to let him read in his own generalIy pleasant accent. The story was an odd assortment of historical details stirred into implausible episodes. The climax in the sewers of Paris was particularly egregious: the kind of thing that an author defends by exclaiming, "But it really happened!" The few metaphors stick out. I wanted to learn something about Hungary, but most of the book takes place after the family leaves. Why did I keep reading? I admire authors who record and shape for us their experience, particularly that of emigration; and for that, I thank Kertes.