"I do not want to be successful at such a price." Interview with Ferenc Barnás

In mental defeat, doctors do not really have the means to help you, but if you try to spring upwards rather than simply go down, then this dynamics may produce a very special personality.

Sports the Hungarians do badly

Zoltán Egressy: Portugal; Spinach and Chips

After a certain number of performances, a production takes on a life of its own, and the critic is unable to review it as an isolated night of entertainment. It has become a continuum, an institution, evolving over time as a living creature would. Such is the case with Zoltán Egressy's two plays.

Rubble clearance

Endre Kukorelly: Ruin

The protagonist in this book is communism itself, one of the most dominant ideas and historical practices of modernity. More precisely, the book is about what we in this country mean by communism: the daily practice of a dictatorship which was born with the idea of communism standing by its cradle.

Coffee & spy tales

A literary evening on a post-communist note

Scene of a series of English-language poetry sessions in Budapest, Treehugger Dan’s Bookstore and Café hosted a reading last Sunday by renowned American-Hungarian translator and poet Paul Sohar.

Ruin: A History of Commonism (an excerpt)

"At times ruining is all it does. Ruin and ruin, Commonism is a ruin. The most interesting thing in Commonism, and this is truly interesting, is that everything is destroyed, and what is built up in place of the destruction, that work is in itself destruction."

The K File – number one

Imre Kertész’s new book in German

Imre Kertész’s Dossier K was published in German last year by Rowohlt Verlag, in Kristin Schwamm’s translation. In November, the book ranked highest on the literary hit list of the Süd-West Deutsche Radio, and now it tops the list of Austrian radio and TV station ORF for December. The book has been extensively reviewed in the German press.

Collected voices

Zsuzsa Rakovszky: A Way Back in Time

Zsuzsa Rakovszky's career as a writer spans 25 years, and she currently enjoys respected status as both poet and novelist. Only in the last few years has she begun writing prose, publishing two highly acclaimed novels. This year's publication of a volume of her collected poetry, Visszaút az idoben (A Way Back in Time), brackets the breadth of her poetic achievements.

Circumstances (poems)

"But that no, that never – that mercilessWolf’s grin, the eyes misty with glee,I know I won’t see that faceThat stared back at me from the blood-freckled mirrorOf a ransacked bedroom…"

Métamorphoses d’un mariage

A Márai novel in French

Another Márai novel has appeared on the international literary scene. Two closely related novels by Sándor Márai have been recently published in French by Albin Michel under the title Métamorphoses d’un mariage, translated by Georges Kassai and Zéno Bianu. The critic of Le Point called the book a masterpiece.

A patented writer of the bourgeoisie

Sándor Márai: Embers

Sándor Márai’s novel burst onto the literary scene at the Frankfurt Book Fair of 1999, thanks to the English and the German translations. In Hungarian the book is having its renaissance. Still, from time to time, we hear voices which talk, in tones of disapproval or apology, about it being overrated, bemoaning the stormy success of a work supposedly inferior to other pieces of the oeuvre.

Poet Victor Határ dies

Another legendary figure passed away

93-year-old Hungarian poet Victor (Gyozo) Határ died on Monday afternoon in St. George’s Hospital in London. Only two weeks ago, Határ, who survived his wife by ten days, took part in a commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the Hungarian Revolution at St. James's Palace, where he read an excerpt in English from his reminiscences about the Revolution.

Blade in Fashion (poems)

"With an easy walkShe passed the executionerStepped off the podiumLeaving bloody footsteps"

"I prefer to be an outsider"

An interview with Gábor Gyukics

Gábor Gyukics (1958) translates Hungarian poetry into English, American poetry into Hungarian, and is also a poet in his own right, writing in both languages.

With Pure Heart

Six poems from a new Attila József volume in English, published by Green Integer Press (Los Angeles). The book, titled A Transparent Lion, was edited and translated by Gabor G. Gyukics and Michael Castro.