Monsieur G.A. en X

by Tibor Déry

Tibor Déry, es uno de los mas grandes escritores Húngaros contemporáneos, miembro del partido comunista desde 1919, excluido de él a partir de los sucesos de octubre de 1956, figura destacada de la vida política y cultural centroeuropea de entreguerras, nos ofrece en esta novela una visión asombrosamente profunda y densa del conflicto ideológico que desgarra a la Humanidad desde que las experiencias revolucionarías conmovieron el viejo orden de Europa. G.A., misterioso personaje en el que no es difícil descubrir al mismo autor — aunque Tibor Déry nos lo presenta simplemente como un amigo de juventud- lega a una ciudad imaginaria, a X., un mundo en el que el hombre, llegado a la cima de su evolución, ha pretendido destruir dos pilares del mundo que conocemos: la mentira y el dinero. X, es un ámbito yerto, unánime, mineral, coagulado fuera de todo tiempo, impreciso en su localización. Los hombres, desligados de la servidumbre del dinero y del interés, ven como sus casas se hunden entre montones de basura que nadie intenta eliminar. Con perfiles de fábula — o de novela de ciencia-ficción- Tibor Déry, una de las mas lucidas mentes de nuestro tiempo, penetra osadamente en los planos más recónditos de la vida humana, y con implacable claridad nos muestra el drama de una civilización que prescinde del hombre y de su marco psicológico natural. Pero en este desierto de piedra donde la vida tiene tan poco valor que los hombres marchan hacia la muerte como si de una liberación se tratara, perdura la conciencia de un valor al que G.A. se entrega como defensa. Por el amor de Elisabeth, y por el atractivo mismo de la destrucción, G.A. volverá a X. Escrita en la cárcel, tras vivir la crisis de unos ideales a los Tibor Déry había consagrado su vida, esta novela constituye un asombroso y cruel documento sobre la condición humana, una velada, densa y aleccionadora meditación sobre la Historia de nuestro tiempo.

Genres: Hungarian Literature, Novels

446 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1966

About the author

Tibor Déry was a Hungarian writer, born in Budapest in 1894. In his early years he was a supporter of communism, but after being excluded from the ranks of the Hungarian Communist Party in 1953 he started writing satire on the communist regime in Hungary.

Georg Lukács praised Dery as being 'the greatest depicter of human beings of our time'.

In 1918, Déry became an active party member in the liberal republic under Mihály Károlyi. Less than a year later however, Béla Kun and his Communist Party rose to power, proclaiming the Hungarian Soviet Republic and exiling Déry. He only returned to Hungary in 1934, having lived in Austria, France and Germany in the meantime. Nevertheless, during the right wing Horthy regime he was imprisoned several times, once because he translated André Gide's Retour de L'U.R.S.S.. In this period, he wrote his greatest novel, The Unfinished Sentence, a 1200-page epic story about the life of the young aristocrat Lorinc Parcen-Nagy who gets into contact with the working classes in Budapest during a period of strike.

In 1953, Déry was expelled from the Communist Party during a 'cleansing' of Hungarian literature. In 1956 he was a spokesman during the uprising, alongside Georg Lukács and Gyula Háy. In the same year, he wrote Niki: The Story of a Dog, a fable about the arbitrary restrictions on human life in Stalinist Hungary. Because of his part in the uprising, he was sentenced to prison for 9 years, but released in 1960. He died in 1977.

He translated Rudyard Kipling's Naulahka and The Lord of the Flies by William Goldinginto Hungarian.

Reviews

[Kasia · Rating 4 out of 5]

MY BRAIN. this was the most absurd thing I have read since high school.
Also G.A. is probably the least likeable protagonist ever, like I hated the guy, luckily this book was not about its characters but about its world and GOD this was srsly some stuff out of my nightmares.

[Maja Bączek · Rating 5 out of 5]

wow

[Martina Soban · Rating 5 out of 5]

400 pagine di distopico davvero assurdo, molto bello. Ho trovato noiosi 3 capitoli verso la fine, quelli delle conferenze (capitoli XX, XXI, XXII) ma per il resto davvero interessante. Vuole essere uno di quei distopici che raccontano di una società diversa, seguendo le vicende del protagonista che scopre una città con le sue regole e convenzioni sociali diverse da quelle a cui era abituato in patria. Troviamo all'interno del libro anche una storia d'amore, riflessioni sulla giustizia e sulla morale. Consiglio a chi piace questo genere.

[Matylda Makuła · Rating 5 out of 5]

niesamowity cudowny abstrakt

[Yupa · Rating 2 out of 5]

Dopo aver passato un po' di tempo nelle prigioni ungheresi, colpa il suo sostegno all'insurrezione del '56, Tibor Déry mostra la sua riconversione scrivendo questo lungo romanzo distopico; una volta tanto una distopia capitalistica e non la solita distopia totalitaria.
Peccato il risultato sia faticoso, noiosissimo e assai fumoso.

[Laia · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am reading it in Catalan