Kiskunhalom

by Lajos Nagy

160 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1999

Reviews

[Dorothy · Rating 3 out of 5]

3,5/5

[Filip Predovan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Was it interesting? Yes
Did it reveal a whole new world that I knew nothing about? Yes

Did it make me interested in that world? Eh, not really.

Good read, with a few moments of excellence, but quite boring and unfulfilling.

My knowledge of Hungarian writing style is almost non-existent, and maybe the "boring and unfulfilling" was the goal of the writer, but I feel that it was the point of the writer all along. My original rating was 3 stars, but thinking about the book and the time period it describes made me change it to 5 stars. I can see the scenario in which Lajos Nagy decided to write it as dull as possible, due to the circumstances described in this book being... dull and boring. After all, the inertness of the Hungarian village folk can not be described any differently.

There is a part in which an elderly villager thinks about his life; reference points used in his thoughts are my favorite part of the whole book.