Ferenc Barnás: Another Death (excerpt from the novel)

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.

Golden Embroidery (Excerpt)

"My brethren, he said... You can see that Our Goddess the Happy Lady, who is none other than the Virgin Mary, appears to you in her heavenly image, as a weasel. Listen to what she has got to say! The pagans were so drunk that they couldn’t tell a squirrel from a weasel."

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.”

War

"...the question was not whether it was going to be ice cream or chocolate, nor whether it was going to be raspberry syrup or peach nectar, not even whether it was going to be a Hungarian dance or a Romanian dance but the real question was always whether it would be peace or war."

37th Hungarian Film Week opened last night

Plenty of literature onscreen

The 37th Hungarian Film Week takes place in Budapest between 30 January and 7 February 2006. The opening ceremony kicked off last night with the screening of a new film by István Szabó, director of Hungary’s only Oscar winning feature film Mephisto.

Géza-Boy: A Theodrama In Two Acts (Excerpt)

János Háy

"Mama, I pressed the button on time, he was already in pieces when he fell on the belt, all I wanted was to have a job, to be worth somethin’, to watch the rocks, I watch the rocks all day, all I wanted was to have somethin’ to do..."

Géza-Boy (A Short Story)

János Háy

"'You’re like a god,' Lajos Herda patted him on the back, then began explaining that there are these rocks on the belt, the way there are people on the earth, and Géza sits above it, the way God sits in heaven, and that, as a matter of fact, he, Géza, is the god of the rocks."

Hungarian literature in Holland

Essay collection tops  bestseller lists in Groningen

A new volume of essays drawn from 20th century Hungarian literature has been published in Holland by Van Gennep Publishing. The collection of essays entitled From Sándor Márai to Magda Szabó is already at the top of bestseller lists in Groningen.

Independent prize long list announced

Two Hungarian novels on the list

The long list for this year’s Independent Foreign Fiction Prize, the major English award for foreign fiction, has been announced. The titles in contention include two books by Hungarian authors: Imre Kertész’s Fatelessness and Magda Szabó’s The Door.

Parallel Stories (Excerpt)

"Immersed in earnest silence they continued to skim and scan, to weigh and to explore one another, pushing well beyond the realm of reason."

22 January: the day of Hungarian culture

Events hosted by Hungarian institutes around the world

22 January is the anniversary of the birth of the Hungarian national anthem, written in 1823 by poet Ferenc Kölcsey. This date is celebrated as the Day of Hungarian Culture, in Hungary as well as abroad. Hungarian cultural institutes around the world are preparing special events to commemorate the day.

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. 

Satan's Tango in New York

Béla Tarr’s film Satan’s Tango, based on László Krasznahorkai’s novel of the same title, was screened in a six-day run at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

The True History of Jacob Wunschwitz (Excerpt)

László Márton

"Running an eye over the regions of our own era, controlled and enmeshed as they are in so many different ways, the sight of disintegrated or as yet unconsolidated terror states prompts us, time and time again, to ask: at what moment do age-old agencies encounter the personal names that suddenly spring to the surface?"