"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.

Literature and censorship in the Kádár era in Hungary

This paper examines reader's reports in the archives of a Hungarian publishing house, and provides a glimpse into the elaborate ritual of tacit negotiations and the exercise of self-censorship in the Kádár era.

Open letter from the Hungarian Association of Literary Translators

The Translators' House at Balatonfüred, a well equipped house for visiting translators of international repute, is under dire threat: private sponsorship has been withdrawn after several years of great generosity, and ministerial financial support is to be severely cut.

Confrontations and interactions

With its objects and its environment, St Stephen's Park in Budapest encapsulates the ways in which recent history was monumentalised in Hungary by various ideologies. - This introductory essay is a fitting hors d'oeuvre to the essays revolving around cultural memory, edited by a team of scholars at Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest.

Imre Kertész announced his retirement

Imre Kertész  has completed his literary oeuvre, and does not wish to write any more. The Hungarian winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, who has been living in Berlin for years, announced this on the occasion of the opening of his archives in Berlin.

The Memory Room

The Translators’ House in Balatonfüred, like so many other institutions of its kind, is dependent on both private, institutional and government largesse. The largesse, it seems now, may run out. Or is in danger of running out.

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.

The internal and unremitting exile of Sándor Márai

Márai’s diary, begun in Budapest well before the gathering storm of Fascist Arrow-Cross occupation and the subsequent deadly seige, can certainly be read as the narrative of an internal emigration. - Ottilie Mulzet's essay on Márai and emigration.

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.

Noémi Szécsi's Finno-Ugrian Vampire in English

Noémi Szécsi’s “Finno-Ugrian Vampire”, a novel about a reluctant vampire girl in 20th century Hungary, was published in the UK by Stork 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.

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.

Ferlinghetti had initially accepted the prize, says Szőcs

In September, Lawrence Ferlinghetti had accepted the Janus Pannonius Prize, but in mid-October he informed the American press that he would decline it because of human rights concerns, the President of the Hungarian PEN Club told Hungarian press agency MTI on Sunday.

Ferlinghetti declines Hungarian award

Lawrence Ferlinghetti, who had been awarded the Janus Pannonius International Poetry Prize, funded by the Hungarian PEN Club, decided to decline the award.