"GREAT ANTICIPATION preceded the release of the maverick writer Attila Bartis's new novel, A nyugalom ( Tranquility ), after his previous book, A keklo para ( Bluish Mist ; see WLT 73:4, P. 784), had solidified his fame as an unorthodox, highly inventive postmodern writer. Its reception has been almost as ambiguous as its main character's psyche. Through anguished retrospection and daredevilish rumination, a baffling and mesmerizing tale unfolds in communist Hungary."-- WLT, Jan. 02 "Bartis at times puts one in mind of Joyce, at others of Kafka, at others of Roth, yet ultimately eludes all comparison by the strength of his originality."-- Arturo Mantecon, ForeWord "Oddly beautiful and unsettling, the novel boldly illustrates the lengths people go to in securing their own private hells." --Publishers Weekly (Starred Review) "Reading like the bastard child of Thomas Bernhard and Elfriede Jelinek, Tranquility is political and personal suffering distilled perfectly and transformed into dark, viscid beauty.

It is among the most haunted, most honest, and most human novels I have ever read."-- Brian Evenson "With impressive force of language, Bartis succeeds in laying bare the ambivalences of his characters, their love-hate relationships and self-destructive energies & The play that mother and son perform & is part Strindberg and part Chekhov, but mostly sheer Beckett or even pure theater of cruelty." --Richard Kammerlings, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.