Peter Nadas (b. 1942) is a Hungarian prose writer who gained worldwide fame primarily thanks to his grandiose novels “The Book of Memories” (1986, Russian translation 2014) and “Parallel Stories” (2005). This publication serves as a kind of introduction to the work of this classic of modern literature, which has not yet been well read in Russia. The book covers more than half a century of his work and includes seven important things, starting with the debut story “The Bible,” in which the twenty-year-old author began to realize his youthful plan to “describe everything, everything that people hide from each other,” and ending with “The Salt of Life "- an ironic travelogue in which Nadash, unexpectedly changing the scale, analyzes not the micro-movements of thoughts and feelings of his contemporaries, but the mechanism of historical changes using the example of a small European town. At the center of the book is a striking text: a philosophical story-essay “Own Death” about a clinical death experienced by the author in 1993. Previously published translations are published in a new edition. Cover photo: Nick Teplov