
I Kiss Your Hands Many Times
Hearts, Souls, and Wars in Hungary
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Narrated by:
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Marianne Szegedy-Maszak
A magnificent wartime love story about the forces that brought the author’s parents together and those that nearly drove them apart
Marianne Szegedy-Maszák’s parents, Hanna and Aladár, met and fell in love in Budapest in 1940. He was a rising star in the foreign ministry - a vocal anti-Fascist who was in talks with the Allies when he was arrested and sent to Dachau. She was the granddaughter of Manfred Weiss, the industrialist patriarch of an aristocratic Jewish family that owned factories, were patrons of intellectuals and artists, and entertained dignitaries at their baronial estates. Though many in the family had converted to Catholicism decades earlier, when the Germans invaded Hungary in March 1944, they were forced into hiding. In a secret and controversial deal brokered with Heinrich Himmler, the family turned over their vast holdings in exchange for their safe passage to Portugal.
Aladár survived Dachau, a fragile and anxious version of himself. After nearly two years without contact, he located Hanna and wrote her a letter that warned that he was not the man she’d last seen, but he was still in love with her. After months of waiting for visas and transit, she finally arrived in a devastated Budapest in December 1945, where at last they were wed.
Framed by a cache of letters written between 1940 and 1947, Szegedy-Maszák’s family memoir tells the story, at once intimate and epic, of the complicated relationship Hungary had with its Jewish population - the moments of glorious humanism that stood apart from its history of anti-Semitism - and with the rest of the world. She resurrects in riveting detail a lost world of splendor and carefully limns the moral struggles that history exacted - from a country and its individuals.
©2013 Marianne Szegedy-Maszák (P)2013 Random House AudioListeners also enjoyed...




















Critic reviews
The audio performance was first rate.
An Amazing Story
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Would you listen to I Kiss Your Hands Many Times again? Why?
Yes. There are so many historical details and personal elements that it's difficult to fully absorb in one reading/listening experience. Also, it's so lovingly crafted that it's poignancy is worth re-experiencing.Who was your favorite character and why?
The author and her parents feelings and emotions make them all favorites.What about Marianne Szegedy-Maszak’s performance did you like?
It is relaxed yet conveys great feeling.Did you have an extreme reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?
It didn't make me laugh or cry but it did haunt me and stay with me. It was fully engaging.A compelling true story, magnificently written
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View into Hungary’s precarious position in WWII
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Excellent
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Excellent writing and beautiful voice of narrater
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Thank you for giving us this book read by the author.
Travel through the two continents and one century
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The rest I'm afraid was written in an overly ornate and cumbersomely florid and stilted style. Repetitive and almost circular. The long lists of people with complex family names, properties and belongings once owned--but never really fleshed out through true story telling quickly becomes tiresome.
The narration was one of the biggest problems for me. When authors act as narrators it often goes wrong. In this case it was difficult. Mispronunciation of words with stress placed inconsistently on the wrong syllable peppered the reading. Frequent verbal stumbles mixed with a tone that was cloying and even condescending made it too much. It just ruined it for me. I think this could have been picked up early in production and corrected. I wonder if a different reader might have saved the book?
Quite The Slog Fleshing Out The Family Tree
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What could have made this a 4 or 5-star listening experience for you?
First a different narrator, second, too much jumping around.What was the most interesting aspect of this story? The least interesting?
The love affair.How could the performance have been better?
Narrated by someone else.What reaction did this book spark in you? Anger, sadness, disappointment?
DisappointmentAny additional comments?
There are so many great books on this period of time with teriffic narrators, this for me, wasn't one of them. I'm sure the story would have been great also if told differently and narrated by someone else.Most Writers shouldn't narrate
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This book wasn’t for you, but who do you think might enjoy it more?
not experientialWhat could Marianne Szegedy-Maszak have done to make this a more enjoyable book for you?
less info on war more character expansionWho would you have cast as narrator instead of Marianne Szegedy-Maszak?
sounds like a teacherIf you could play editor, what scene or scenes would you have cut from I Kiss Your Hands Many Times?
not my cup of teato educational not a story
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