A relentless march towards tragedy

Judit Kováts: Denied

Anna was a carefree teenager in 1944. Then World War II broke out. She is now 85 years old, and narrates her life, broken forever by her war experiences. Judit Kováts's "Denied" shows history as we have never seen it in books and sources.

A guide to Hungarians

János Lackfi: What are Hungarians like?

The last few years have been abundant in books specializing in understanding and interpreting the attributes and the behaviour of Hungarians. János Lackfi experiments with well-known elements that have been on the periodic table of Hungarians for decades, and tries to create a new and interesting compound.

I want to suck your blood. Noémi Szécsi: The Finno-Ugrian Vampire

Blood-sucker and tale-teller: Noémi Szécsi’s latter-day vampire girl is a combination of the eastern European and the Indian vampire. - Ottilie Mulzet's review on The Finno-Ugrian Vampire, recently published in English.

Drowned by time: friends and/or informers?

When years ago his friend called him to say there was something he wanted to talk about, Balázs Györe had no idea this friend was going to announce that he regularly informed on him in the 1970s.

Those half-dead sentences. Miklós Mészöly: Death of an Athlete

The female companion of a recently deceased athlete is asked to record her memories of her lover, but she is unable to write the "official" narrative that the Communist regime seeks from her.

Rococo jungle. Miklós Szentkuthy: Marginalia on Casanova

A running commentary on Casanova, with all manner of aperçus in a freely flowing essayistic style that nonetheless bears evidence of considerable erudition.

In cold blood? - Szilárd Rubin: The Holy Innocents

A posthumous work by the recently rediscovered Szilárd Rubin, this documentary novel tries to investigate a mysterious case of serial murder, committed in the 1950s by a 20-year-old woman in a small Hungarian town.

Rats, revolution and cotton flowers. Zsolt Láng: Beasts of the Earth

This novel speaks in a refreshingly normal tone about sexuality and about Hungarian life in Romania – two topics surrounded by lies, hypocrisy, shame and suffering.

The language of disintegration. Ferenc Barnás: Another death

Ferenc Barnás’s most recent novel belongs to those rare books which depict our times in an original voice and with an individual vision.

Boudoir & Theology

Introduction to Miklós Szentkuthy's Marginalia on Casanova

Lord of illusions or exhibitor of shadows, there is something of the devourer in this man, who cannot bear to live cramped in one body, one life, one language. — "Marginalia on Casanova", the "utterly unclassifiable work of Miklós Szentkuthy" is published in English for the first time by Contra Mundum Press.