The End of a Family Story

The narrator of The End of a Family Story is a young boy who lives alone with his grandparents. His rebellious, talkative grandfather escapes the present by fleeing to his memories of the past, weaving for his grandson a fantastic tapestry of stories both of family sagas and of biblical, Talmudic, and historical characters. Simultaneously, the storyteller and the boy realize that the boy's father, a government official, has betrayed the family and is now being named a traitor by the authorities. Liberated into sincerity and freedom by his grandfather's stories, the boy gives dark and passionate testimony to the horrors of the adult world.Inviting comparisons with the work of Isaac Babel, Salman Rushdie, and Italo Calvino, The End of a Family Story further confirms Nadas as one of contemporary Europe's preeminent novelists.