BUDAPEST

A seamless, delectable narrative about a ghostwriter who immerses himself in the Hungarian language, by the daring Brazilian pop lyricist and novelist (Turbulence, 1991, etc.) who’s too little known here.

Jose Costa is the unappreciated genius behind the writing services of Cunha & Costa Cultural Agency, overlooking Rio’s Copacabana Beach: he writes speeches for presidents and heads of unions and, eventually, an autobiography for a German executive, Kaspar Krabbe, that becomes a literary bestseller. But writing another’s life begins to feel like “having an affair with somebody else’s wife,” and, though he puffs up with vanity, Costa isn’t really sure who he is. After an emotionally wrenching meeting at the convention of anonymous writers’ in Melbourne, Costa gets rerouted for the night in Budapest, where he becomes intrigued by the jealously guarded way that Hungarian is spoken by the locals—and by the sweetly bitter pumpkin rolls he devours at the hotel, a food that subsequently serves as a kind of madeleine to his memory. Undervalued by his agency’s boss, and by his lovely but spoiled TV newsreader wife, who thinks he’s a hack, Costa returns to the beguiling Budapest and meets up with the woman who will serve as his muse and teacher, Kriska: “One does not learn the Magyar language from books,” she informs him point-blank, then initiates him relentlessly, sensuously, into total immersion in her language. Back and forth between Rio and Budapest goes Costa—now Zsoze Kosta—his narrative fluid as he humorously mocks, then gravely assumes his new tongue, all in preparation for his abandoning Portuguese altogether and becoming an established imposter in his adopted language.

Buarque has created a warm, engaging, memorable first-person voice in his credulous and well-meaning Costa, the whole translated here gorgeously and sinuously: sentences at random can be picked and savored for delicacy and rhythm.