The Afterlife of Stars Audiobook

Quotes

• Exquisitely moving . . . Kertes is a natural storyteller who creates vivid characters that resonate on the page.

  — Jerusalem Post

• “The Afterlife of Stars moved me more than any other novel I’ve read in recent memory. It hypnotizes. It delights. It shines on every page with a quiet, implacable, blanketing beauty-like a snowfall. Beyond all else, The Afterlife of Stars reaches into your chest and takes hold of your heart and does not let go, not even after the last page is turned. The Afterlife of Stars keeps shining on. What an exquisite novel.”

  — Tim O’Brien, National Book Award-winning author

• “The Afterlife of Stars is a great adventure story, at once fantastical and true. And the inimitable Beck brothers allow us to see past the horrors of the world with a childlike precocity.”

  — David Bezmozgis, two-time Giller Prize finalist for The Betrayers and The Free World

• “The Afterlife of Stars is tender in its evocation of fierceness and wrenching in its rendering of two brothers’ hunger to penetrate both the wonders and the awful secrets of a world that always seems just out of reach. It’s memorably sad and surprisingly funny on the elusiveness of home and the intensity of family bonds.”

  — Jim Shepard, author of The Book of Aron

• “The Afterlife of Stars blazes with every single good thing that a work of fiction ever does or could do. It is brilliant. Radiant.”

  — Richard Bausch, PEN/Malamud Award-winning author

• “We meet the Beck brothers at the very moment history lays its claim on them. Their bond is sure to become one of literature’s great and sustaining relationships. Joseph Kertes writes with tremendous love for the idiosyncratic and passionate loyalties of family. With masterly concision, he expresses the trauma of an era. This is a book of remarkable scope and depth; unforgettable and deeply moving.”

  — Anne Michaels, author of Fugitive Pieces

• “Agony, humor, and a boy’s bewilderment and wonder coalesce in this glittering novel. Joseph Kertes evokes a vanishing culture with poignancy and love. His boy-narrator is a marvelous creation.”

  — D. M. Thomas, Man Booker Prize finalist for The White Hotel

• "The Afterlife of Stars is Joseph Kertes’ masterpiece. Robert Beck, the young narrator, is absolutely captivating (and very funny!) as he takes us along on his terrifying journey.”

  — Miriam Toews, two-time Giller Prize finalist

• “A beautifully written story of brotherly love, family, and the intersection of history in the 20th century.”

  — Library Journal (Starred Review)

• “Kertes, who himself escaped Hungary after the 1956 revolution, delivers a fastpaced and taut narrative that captures how inscrutable the world’s cruelties can be to the children who witness them. Stirring and haunting, The Afterlife of Stars memorably shows how the bonds of brotherhood stay strong in a crisis.”

  — Booklist (Starred Review)

• “[A] fervent novel. Kertes (Gratitude, 2009), winner of the National Jewish Book Award, begins his newest work in his own native Budapest…. [protagonists] Robert and Attila are a winning pair of guides….Kertes’ voice is a lyrical one, and his work is frequently moving.”

  — Kirkus Reviews