MILLIE

About the Book

"Sensitive and powerful, Peter Hargitai's novel Millie brims with passion and wit. Its hero, Art Nagy, is a Hungarian Alex Portnoy, forging anew an identity on the edge of two cultures Millie is destined to take a distinguished place on the shelf of world literature."
-Lili Bita
Author of Sister of Darkness

"In this darkly comic novel about a refugee boy's coming-of-age in 1960's America, Peter Hargitai does for Cleveland's Hungarians what Herbert Gold did for its Jews-bring to life the quirks, prejudices, and strivings of a people struggling to make it in an alien land."
-Sanford J. Smoller
Contributing editor of Pembroke Magazine and author of Adrift Among Geniuses: Robert McAlmon, Writer and Publisher of the Twenties

"Hargitai's prose is swift, sure, and irresistible. Reminiscent of Kundera."
-Apalachee Quarterly

PETER HARGITAI's Millie is a novel that touches the heart. In a story of the quintessential American dream, immigration, Hargitai tells of the coming-of-age of Art Nagy, a young Hungarian who arrives in America after the 1956 Hungarian Revolution against Soviet-Communist occupation. Art struggles to make sense of life not only as an adolescent but also within his family who insist on transplanting many of their customs and much of their thinking from their country of origin, including less than attractive ideas about race and class. Art's likes and dislikes and the friends he chooses bring the family to clash over values and beliefs, and culminate in tragedy when he falls in love with a girl from a different background. His deep love for Millie pits him against everything his family believes in . And the final pages of the novel reveal acts of horror in his family's past and explain much of what Art Nagy was up against. Every page keeps the reader fascinated, unable to put it down until the very end.

Steven Tötösy de Zepetnek, Editor
Comparative Cultural Studies Series
Purdue University Press

About the Author

Peter Hargitai is an award-winning translator, poet and novelist. His selection of the poems of Attila József in Perched on Nothing?s Branch garnered for him the Academy of American Poets Landon Translation Award and a listing among world classics in Harold Bloom?s The Western Canon. For his translation of Antal Szerb?s novel The Traveler, he was awarded the Füst Milán Prize from the Hungarian Academy of Sciences; and for his steadfast commitment to translating, publishing, and teaching Hungarian literature in a world language, he was awarded the Pro Cultura Hungarica Medal from the Republic of Hungary. Professor Hargitai is on the English faculty at Florida International University.