Imre Kertész and the question of identity

Ivan Sanders

Imre Kertész was the topic of a panel discussion at a recent American Slavist conference in Toronto. A member of the audience expressed the opinion that to a committed American Jew like himself, Fatelessness is an artistically distinguished, even exquisite example of Jewish self-hate.

A legend about you

Éva Bánki: Golden Embroidery

The novel is not so much about writing a biography as about the dilemmas that emerge in the process: about the impossibility of “historical authenticity.”

An irregular meeting of parallels

Péter Nádas: Parallel Stories

1500 pages of memorable resonances between the perceptions, emotions, thoughts, gestures and stories of the various characters. And actually, Nádas says little more beyond the structural beauty of parallels. Yet this is how he comes to include so much about the Hungarian and European history of the 20th century, about our culture and, within that, our most neuralgic regional characteristics, our physical, psychological and social compulsions. What he does not offer is an overarching ideology, an ideal to grant cohesion. 

A literary approach towards aristocratism

Péter Esterházy: Celestial Harmonies

It is a pleasure to see how one of the most prominent writers of post-communist Hungary juggles with the re-owned cultural historical mass – the legend of the long-distance-running Esterházy family.

Coming to terms with history

Pál Závada: The Photographer’s Legacy

Závada is intrigued by the question of individual and collective responsibility in the events of the twentieth century, and the narrative form he uses makes his novel a real novelty: letting different groups of narrators speak seems to be the proper form for verbalizing all the possible questions the twentieth century raised in terms of collective responsibility.

A successful border-crossing

Zsuzsa Rakovszky: The Year of the Falling Star

Zsuzsa Rakovszky’s new novel is 'a novel of boundaries' in which "mother and child, man and woman seek the boundaries between them," straining against the bounds of the dictatorship of the 1950’s.

A formal exercise

Endre Kukorelly: Fairy Vale, or Riddles of the Heart of Man

How can one, in spite of all the doubts and technical obstacles, tell the story of someone growing up in Budapest and its surroundings during the 60s and the 70s? How can one create a classically structured story with the help of modern and even postmodern techniques?

A literary analysis of childhood trauma

György Dragomán: The White King

His talent is at its best when depicting the merciless cruelty of children, the brutality of adults, deprivation, fears arising from different roots and terror at large which is characteristic in all totalitarian systems.

Madness transformed into tranquillity

Attila Bartis: Tranquillity

The novel is indeed smothering, the book is incredibly powerful, like a ramshackle work’s procreator staying his readers with a confident hand. Stay calm! – the Whole will take effect.

An Island of Sound

Hungarian Poetry and Fiction Before and Beyond the Iron Curtain

Would I be willing to write a review of this ground-breaking anthology of Hungarian literature in English translation, the editor of HLO asked. "No" was my instant reply, I simply couldn't. It would be simpler to write about why I could not. A foolish reflex. Why not write about why not was the response.