Budapest
Chico Buarque began as a composer of pop music and, in the 1960s, rose to become one of Latin America`s most successful songwriters. However, he harbored a long ambition to write fiction, and began publishing novels in 1991. In BUDAPEST, his third, a professional ghostwriter named Josi Costa finds himself briefly in Budapest after his plane is grounded because of a terrorist scare. He is somewhat reluctant to return to Rio (Buarque`s own city), where his marriage to Vanda is on the rocks. Once there, haunted by the Hungarian language, he returns to Budapest for a longer stay, falls in love with his language teacher, and eventually publishes a book of poetry in Hungarian under the pseudonym Zsoze Kssta. Buarque`s novel plays with the idea of doubles, with questions of identity, with the tension between the desire for fame and the need for anonymity--and with the contrasts between two fascinating cities.

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