Leopard V: An Island of Sound: Hungarian Poetry and Fiction Before and Beyond the Iron Curtain

by George Szirtes (Editor), David Hill (Translator)

Hungarian literature can be characterized as the literature of anxiety. Throughout the 1900s, as Europe's political and social fortunes changed, Hungary's writers reflected on those changes, absorbing and distilling them in work of documentary, poetic, or comically grotesque power. This anthology of fiction and poetry begins by setting out some of the major landmarks from the end of the Second World War, then concentrates on the period before, during, and after the key date of 1989, when Central Europe was transformed once again. The volume traces that history of change from Marai's wartime diaries, into the Stalinist period with the one-minute novels of Istvan Orkeny, past the paradoxical post-modernist humanism of Peter Esterhazy, and through the haunted waste-tracts of Laszlo Krasznahorkai. It celebrates the anxiety, agitation, crying, and whispering of the Hungarian literary imagination.

352 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 2004

About the author

George Szirtes was born in Budapest in 1948 and came to England as a refugee in 1956. He was brought up in London and studied Fine Art in London and Leeds. His poems began appearing in national magazines in 1973 and his first book, The Slant Door, was published in 1979. It won the Faber Memorial prize the following year.

By this time he was married with two children. After the publication of his second book, November and May, 1982, he was invited to become a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. Since then he has published several books and won various other prizes including the T S Eliot Prize for Reel in 2005.

Having returned to his birthplace, Budapest, for the first time in 1984, he has also worked extensively as a translator of poems, novels, plays and essays and has won various prizes and awards in this sphere. His own work has been translated into numerous languages.

Beside his work in poetry and translation he has written Exercise of Power, a study of the artist Ana Maria Pacheco, and, together with Penelope Lively, edited New Writing 10 published by Picador in 2001.

George Szirtes lives near Norwich with his wife, the painter Clarissa Upchurch. Together they ran The Starwheel Press. Corvina has recently produced Budapest: Image, Poem, Film, their collaboration in poetry and visual work.

Reviews

[Kris Kipling]

A collection of stories, poems, and excerpts from longer XX Century Hungarian works. It begins with a wartime fragment from once obscure, briefly championed "rediscovery" Sandor Marai (Marai Sandor)'s diaries and proceeds to the full text of Nobel winner Imre Kertesz's novella The Union Jack, which is available as a stand-alone volume from Melville Press. Popular poets excerpted include Pilinszky, Nemes Nagy, Vas and Weores. So far as I can tell, given my limited knowledge of Hungarian literature, the only major figure not included here is Milan Fust. So, what do we get? Like all anthologies like this it is a sampler and, while almost always enjoyable, there's so much packed into this 350-page book that becomes only a collection of little samples, save for the novella. There is also too much of fairly unmemorable recent writers. It all would have worked better if focus had been on larger excerpts from major writers and scrap the mediocrities. Still, there's enough of interest here to justify a look, for the curious...

[Adam]

Not done yet, but so far I can't believe Imre Kertesz won the Nobel Prize or that Peter Nadas hasn't.