Like the renowned American writer Edmund Wilson, who began to learnHungarian at the age of 65, Richard Teleky started his study of thatdifficult language as an adult. Unlike Wilson, he is a third-generationHungarian-American with a strong desire to understand how his ethnicbackground has affected the course of his life. "Exploring myethnicity," he writes, "became a way of exploring thearbitrary nature of my own life. It was not so much a search for rootsas for a way of understanding rootlessness - how I stacked up againstanother way of being." He writes with clarity, perception, andhumour about a subject of importance to many Americans - reconcilingtheir contemporary identity with a heritage from another country. From an examination of photographer Andre Kertesz to a visit to aHungarian-American church in Cleveland, from a consideration ofstereotypical treatment of Hungarians in North American fiction andfilm to a description of the process of translating the Hungarianpoetry into English, Teleky's interests are wide-ranging. Heconcludes with an account of his first visit to Hungary at the end ofSoviet rule. | Hungarian Rhapsodies by Richard Teleky, Paperback | Indigo Chapters