I can't identify any other coincidences in character, trait or action beyond those listed here. And, as I've already noted, I can't guess how conscious the mirrorings are.
But it is worth noting that Prague's first chapter opens with five young expatriates playing "sincerity," a game in which each player makes one true statement and three false, then is rated by opponents on the apparent veracity of each statement. The winner is the person who best conflates fiction and fact in the audience's mind. Was this scene Phillips' invitation to former Budapest expats to play a private game of sincerity... or just another fiction?
(Disclosures: a) I've never met Phillips. But after he left Budapest, I became friends with his buddy Tony Denninger, who is listed first in Prague's acknowledgments. I've since tried to track down Tony but failed. Tony, drop me a line! b) After the New Republic article, Congress temporarily froze government funding of its novel "enterprise funds" for Eastern European. Among other things, Holtzman's roughly $400,000 a year salary, earned working for a wholly owned subsidiary of the US-funded Hungarian American Enterprise Fund, had aroused Congressional interest. Along with the New Republic, prognosis, Budapest Week, Magyar Narancs and the International Herald Tribune — all of which had published versions of the article — I received a letter suggesting a retraction and mooting a possible lawsuit. I had taped everything. The article stood and no suit materialized. c) The recollections in this review were jostled into consciousness reading Rick Bruner's blog.)
Article comments
1 - Stephen Frater
As one mentioned in the article as a model for Charles Gabor, all I can saw is that Budapest in 1989-1992 was never as dull and vapid as this book makes it appear. Yes I did buy a major historic printing company and yes it prospered and is still doing so almost a decade and a half later. We maintained full employment, raised quality and pay levels to international standards and won awards for doing so from among others the World Economic Forum. It remains among my proudest achievements. The sense of Hungary's rejoining the Europe and the world after almost a century of strife and fear is lost in the novel's myopic focus on a bunch of one dimensional yuppie louts. It was a time of lights, not shadows.
Stephen Frater