Revised Edition is an ’appendix’ to Esterházy’s great novel, Harmonia Caelestis, which was published in French in 2001 and had an excellent critical reception. After having finished his masterpiece, the writer discovered that his beloved and revered father had been an informer of the Communist secret police virtually to the end of his life, spying on their friends and acquaintances. Revised Edition is the working through of this painful trauma – a personal trauma of the writer, but also a communal trauma of his generation.

Strangely enough, the first review appeared in the Swiss Le Temps on 3 December, under the title Mon père, ce vulgaire mouchard. Yet this is understandable, given that André Clavel, the leading literary critic of the prestigious newspaper has a vivid interest in Hungarian literature; he has written sensitive articles about Krúdy, Kosztolányi, Grendel and Esterházy, among others.

The first Paris reaction to Revised Edition appeared in the excellent critical column of Télérama, written by writer Michèle Gazier who has visited Hungary several times.

On the occasion of the publication, Gilles Anquetil, editor of Nouvel Observateur made an interview with Esterházy. Anquetil’s interest in Hungarian literature dates back to the beginning of the 90s, when he devoted a whole page to Sándor Márai, at the time a completely ignored writer everywhere in the world, including his native Hungary. He regards Esterházy as one of the most significant European writers.

In the interview, he asks the author whether the new EU members have come to terms with their past. Esterházy answers in the negative, and adds that people in these countries are lying to themselves – they are interested in their neighbour’s, rather than their own past. It is very hard to confront oneself with the thousand compromises that were the price of survival; it is easier to say that we were victims, says the writer.

Why is Hungary such a literary country, the interviewer asks. Esterházy answers that the lack of perspective and utter hopelessness demand great discipline and intellectual concentration from the writer. ’These works are born of solitude’, he says.

Péter Esterházy: Revu et corrigé, Du Monde entier, translated by Ágnes Járfás