Son of a Kulák

 
 

tells an unlikely story: how a farm boy living an idyllic pastoral life in Hungary got caught up in the historic upheavals of the twentieth century and eventually found himself in America, where he earned degrees from the country’s top universities, had a long and distinguished teaching career, garnered all the major awards in the landscape architecture profession, and recently retired in comfort. 


Mine is the tale of a happy early life abruptly destroyed, of persecution and suffering, of a dramatic flight from home and loved ones into the unknown, of a protracted struggle in a strange new country, and ultimately, of personal happiness and professional achievement. Ultimately, I enjoyed a triumphant return to the birthplace I’d once fled in fear, as a successful man. Like other refugee narratives, Son of a Kulák combines the broad sweep of history with the intimate drama of a personal struggle. My memoir, however, is the only one to reveal the plight of the hundred thousand hard-working Hungarian farmers responsible for feeding their countrymen before the communists arrived. Almost overnight the Kuláks--as the Stalinists derisively labeled them--became vilified and persecuted.

Every now and then, one picks up a book that is so inspiring, so humbling and so informative that it cannot be put down.  Such is the case with Julius Fabos’ Son of a Kulák.

                                                       ― John Mullin, Dean of the Graduate School, University of Massachusetts


This is a story that must be told: how one man rose above cruelty and inhumanity and...became a world leader in his chosen profession of landscape architecture.

                                   ― Robert Mortensen, FASLA, past president, American Society of Landscape Architects