Hard-boiled thrillers from Hungary: Vilmos Kondor

The novels of Vilmos Kondor, the first Hungarian author of hard-boiled thrillers, became instant bestsellers in Hungary, and made the previously despised genre of thriller a subject of interest for mainstream literary critics.

Géza Ottlik was born 100 years ago

Though the best of the middle generation of Hungarian writers regard Ottlik as their precursor and his School at the Frontier as one of the greatest Hungarian novels of the 20th century, the writer still remains unknown for the English-speaking audience.

An even quieter revolution V: A high mark for Miklós Mészöly

Miklós Mészöly has already been referred to in several previous articles as a major ‘godfather’. Given the influence he has had on just about all major authors writing in Hungarian today it is surprising how virtually nothing by him has ever been published in English.

The art of Agota Kristof (1935-2011)

The art of Agota Kristof is the greatest example in European literature of making a virtue out of necessity. Her handicaps eventually added up to a full-scope representation of the world.

Mona Lisa among the rocks

Ágnes Nemes Nagy (1922-1991) is one of the genuinely important European poets of the twentieth century. But how is that to be proved to an anglophone reader? Anyone can make claims, and people do so all the time. – George Szirtes's Introduction to Ágnes Lehóczky's new book on Ágnes Nemes Nagy.

György Rába (1924–2011)

"I feel objects challenge me, and this challenge has become more direct during the years. Objects speak to me more directly, whether they are trees, plants, animals or people in natural surroundings." - Poet, translator and literary historian György Rába, one of the most eminent figures of 20th-century Hungarian literature, died on 29 January 2011.

Miklós Mészöly (1921-2001)

A Portrait

He was not an Oppositionist in the way that, for instance, György Konrád was; more a genuinely independently-minded spirit in a way that few of us can say of ourselves. He wrote the unformulable down. He created a world and did not catch it in the act.

Indian Summer

István Vas (1910–1991)

I cross Erzsébet bridge without a coat on.

Yes. October fell in love with us – so we thought.
It was all bright that morning. Then suddenly not.

James Dean and the bright future of socialism

Szilárd Rubin

Recently deceased Hungarian prose writer Szilárd Rubin’s chef-d’oeuvre, The Chicken Game, is one of the undeservedly forgotten masterpieces of the Kádár era, re-published in Hungary in 2004.

He had a dream

George Konrád: a portrait

In sketching a portrait of George Konrád, it is my intention to delineate the features of a creative personality whose likeness is deeply embedded in history; an Eastern European intellectual whose life history, as well as the motifs of his work, are deeply interwoven with the public history of the region.