Meeting with a Thesaurus, or How to Translate the Word ‘Jaj‘

I came home one day and there it was on my desk: unassuming, as if not wanting to draw attention to itself, and yet noticeable for all that.

The Nile’s nymphs, Christ’s mysteries

Miklós Szentkuthy

As you have had, patres et fratres, ample occasion to hear the legends of St Anthony the Hermit, of Egypt, it is high time you heard, for a change, the golden truth about him, and not just the usual golden-legend stuff.

Géza Ottlik was born 100 years ago

Though the best of the middle generation of Hungarian writers regard Ottlik as their precursor and his School at the Frontier as one of the greatest Hungarian novels of the 20th century, the writer still remains unknown for the English-speaking audience.

Krasznahorkai at the Writers' Festival in Jerusalem

László Krasznahorkai will be guest at the Third International Writers’ Festival in Jerusalem, held between 13-18 May 2012.

"I never write to provoke": interview with Janne Teller

Janne Teller's young-adult novel Nothing (2000) caused controversy in Denmark and was banned for a time before it became compulsory reading in Danish schools. Her 2004 novel If Scandinavia Were at War shows the hopelessness of refugees and paints a dire picture of the majority society. Janne Teller was one of the guest writers of the International Book Festival in Budapest this year.

Translation grant for publishers

The Petőfi Literary Museum in Budapest has announced a grant for the foreign language publication of works by Hungarian authors, fiction as well as nonfiction.

A comedy of ideas. Miklós Szentkuthy: Prae

"Prae" is a huge mock-encyclopaedia of whatever we know (or its author knows) about mind and matter, history and self, language and reality, fact and fiction, man and woman. Its stance is a sort of Olympian irreverence of the writer as philosopher-clown toward controlling and ordering constructs of every  description.

Prae: Recollections of my career II.

Miklós Szentkuthy

The aim of my writings was a Catalogus rerum, an Index of everything in the Entire World: not a single novel in isolation, but a mirror of the world that takes in everything. 

Prae: Recollections of my career I.

Miklós Szentkuthy

The so-called intellectual elements ended up in my books as naturally as a folk song would, in the manner of flowers of the field that had no knowledge of “high culture” or “deep philosophy”, and did not even seek it.

One minute stories (excerpts)

István Örkény

"What I was able to create... a couple of novels of various lengths, five or six volumes of short stories and two plays, I created more or less in secret, and I did so in the precious few hours I was able to wrench from the inexorable march of history. Perhaps this is why I have always striven for economy and precision, looking for the essence, often in haste."

István Örkény was born 100 years ago

2012 is the centenary year of István Örkény, the master of grotesque, whose one minute stories and absurd plays depict the predicament of modern man with a keen sense of humour. Among the events of the Örkény Memorial Year are the 'Örkény Islands' in Budapest cafés, where his books are placed in several languages for guests to thumb.

19th International Book Festival in Budapest

The 19th International Book Festival in Budapest will be held at the Millenáris between 19 and 22 April, with around 300 new publications, 350 programmes, 500 Hungarian and more than 60 foreign authors. This year the Festival’s Guest of Honour will be Italian writer Claudio Magris as well as a group of Nordic countries.

"I make no distinction between translation and original work": interview with Clive Wilmer

Clive Wilmer is a much-respected poet and one of the best translators of Hungarian poetry into English. In his new collection he included no less than 36 of his translations from the Hungarian.

"I lived on this earth": book launch at the British Embassy in Budapest

The creation of this slim anthology, the reason for today’s gathering, has come about for one reason and one reason only: to speak the unspeakable. In words and in music.