Writer Akos Verboczy publishes his first novel about his reality as a Montrealer of Hungarian origin who immigrated to Canada. My Father’s House describes a return to his past that he realizes during a brief stay in Budapest.
Arrived in Quebec at the age of 11, Akos Verboczy had discussed his personal experience of immigration and uprooting in Rhapsodie québécoise, itinerary d’un enfant de la loi 101, an autobiographical story which had achieved some success in 2016. He returns to the literary scene with a novel that also has the value of a personal narrative. On a whim, his character returns to the place of his youth, 12 years after burying his father there. A one-week return to his hometown to find his roots there, members of his family, friends and people who mattered to him, like his first girlfriend.
Budapest has changed, like those he left behind when he immigrated to Canada with his mother. The reunion could be touching, moving, but we do not feel much enthusiasm in this man who wants to find his father’s house, near Lake Balaton, a place he adored as a child. Nostalgia seems to touch him, but without us feeling that it reaches him deep inside. The “son of America”, as his father called him, swims in the troubled waters of the immigrant with a confused conscience, torn between the lasting traces of childhood and an existence constructed elsewhere which takes him ever further away from its roots.
