The Forest

Fresh out of an unsatisfying relationship with a younger woman, John Martin, a successful advertising agent living in New York, is suddenly possessed by a strange and irresistible desire to cross the globe to Budapest and strike up a new friendship with his ex-wife, with whom he hasn't spoken in years. Plunged into the mysterious world of Budapest just after the collapse of the Iron Curtain, he falls in love with a waitress while also inadvertently reawakening and expanding intimacy with his ex-wife. He quickly becomes the apex of two conflicting love triangles, but his repeated trips to Budapest only deepen the confusion and longing set off by a series of dreams and random events that he mistakenly takes as his emotional guide. The first book of the Andrássy utca Trilogy, a series of thematically related works, The Forest is a sumptuous and captivating novella, rich in psychological insights and depth of linguistic expression. Death in Venice for Generation X, The Forest does for post-communist Budapest what Hemmingway and Fitzgerald did for Paris in the twenties.