Another Death (excerpt from the novel)

Ferenc Barnás

Barnás has found an authentic viewpoint and a language that is unique in contemporary fiction to trace that "other life" underneath the life of each of us.

Hanele (excerpt)

György Láng

"If this was her fate, why rebel? It couldn’t get any better, only worse" – an excerpt from Hanele, a short novel about an ugly, miserable Jewish orphan girl in a pre-World War II shtetl. The book, rich in ethnographic detail and betraying strong empathy for the outcast, was written by the polymath writer and composer György Láng.

Poem of the Month - István Ágh: The Night Dog

This poem by István Ágh (1938) draws us into a world of darkness, anxiety and fear, where you don't know any more who fears whom, where landscape, animal and human are all imbued with a nameless rage.

Summer brunch (intermezzo)

Péter Gerőcs

"For the truth is, my boy," he always told me, "is only the pawns matter, the major pieces are always the first to be exchanged." So that was my father's lesson to me. I of course disregarded his advice, and thereby demolished his reality, the imaginary one based on unwritten codes; usually using two knights, the occasional rook helping out from the background.

Gábor T. Szántó: Threesome (Excerpt from the novel)

A master, a student and a woman are trying to extricate themselves from the dead end situations of their life in typical present-day Budapest scenes. Can we step out of the shadow of the past, or will we carry it within ourselves forever?

Poems of the month - Sándor Weöres: Eternal Moment; Eternity

A bather's thigh brushed by skimming fish, a lizard's leap, bird-wings’ caress. Moments leaning out of time, shaped out of the air. Like a poem; like a festive season. We wish all our readers a happy holiday.

Miklós Mészöly: Death of an athlete (excerpts)

"Death of an Athlete" is a 1961 novel by Miklós Mészöly, one of the most significant prose masters of Hungarian literature of the second half of the 20th century. The novel was first published in French in 1965 and was translated into many languages. The following excerpts are from the first edition of the novel in English translation, to be published soon by Bluecoat Press.


Turkish mirror (excerpts)

Viktor Horváth

"Colorful canvases stretched taut between wooden frames!... Allah, help me, I thought, these are paintings! Kasim bey had not burned them when he occupied the castle. Why not?" - Excerpts from Viktor Horváth's 2012 European Union Prize-winning novel.



Poem of the month - Piroska Reichardt: Before Sleep

I search the Web, and am unable to find a picture of her anywhere. Nothing. But her poems, it seems are almost everywhere: I find them posted on blog after blog, almost as if they were being passed from hand to hand as a kind of solace for our days.

Three Poems

Dezső Kosztolányi

"Who has seen what is concealed in their rooms' shadows?
Who has looked to see if upon their beds there is a pillow?
Who has seen what they are, the sad people of Pest?"