title: Fire and Knowledge: Fiction and Essays
author: Pter Ndas
description: <i>Starred Review.</i> Hungarian author Ndas is the kind of writer who manages to be wry without being funnythe graveyards of Europe's recent past are too fresh for that. His trenchant works fit comfortably into a continental literary tradition of high seriousness that encompasses writers as disparate as W.G. Sebald, Thomas Bernhard and Imre Kertsz. A palpable literary hero in Germany, Ndas has produced novels of Proustian theme if not length (<i>A Book of Memories</i>). This volume collects shorter pieces from 1962 to 2000. Essays and stories in one volume can strike Americans as an uneasy fit, but Ndas's essays are so distinctively associative that they have the force of stories. Judging from these short works, a childhood in Stalinist Budapest left Ndas with a healthy respect for the secret, the unspoken. In the title essay, a multiple arson (someone set fire to the four corners of Hungary) leads an impromptu outbreak of candor on the televisionin a police state, a decidedly attention-getting act. In the story Liar, Cheater the consequences of a childhood lie become increasingly inscrutable. Bracing and subtle, this thought-provoking volume has a rightful place on the shelf of any serious lover of literature. <i>(Aug.)</i> <br />Copyright  Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
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  # Call of Fire
  
  
  ### Order of the Fire Series Book 1
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## P.E. Padilla
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ![Crimson Cat Publishing](../images/00004.jpeg)
  
  
  ![Crimson Cat Publishing](../images/00003.jpeg)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Copyright © 2019 by P. E. Padilla
  
  
  All rights reserved.
  
  
  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or
  mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without
  written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in
  a book review.
  
  
  This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters and incidents are either
  the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any
  resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, organizations, events or
  locales is entirely coincidental.
  
  
  
  
  
  Cover Art by Covermint Design
  
  
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  ### Contents
  
  
  
  
  
  