Marrying Hungary

by Linda Leith

Linda Leith's memoir Marrying Hungary is the moving story of the daughter of Irish Communist parents who, after a peripatetic childhood, falls in love and marries a Hungarian refugee. It is a glimpse into a life spent among foreigners, a tale of identity and eventual independence. And it reveals what few memoirs what brings a couple together, what marriage means to an ambitious and accomplished woman, and why sometimes even a good marriage eventually fails.

160 pages, Paperback

First published October 15, 2008

About the author

Montreal writer and publisher Linda Leith was born in Northern Ireland, and has lived in London, Basel, Paris, Budapest, and Ottawa.

Her most recent book is The Girl from Dream City: A Literary Life (University of Regina Press, April 2021.

The daughter of a glamorous mother and a charming left-wing doctor with a secret mental illness, Linda Leith is "fearless and unstoppable" -- Will Aitken, author of Antigone Undone

"If you liked memoirs by Diana Athill, Alexandra Fuller, and Madame de Stael, you'll love Linda Leith's new book." -- Mary Soderstrom, author of Frenemy Nations and Concrete

Leith's other nonfiction books include the literary history Writing in the Time of Nationalism: From Two Solitudes to Blue Metropolis (Signature 2010), published in a French translation as Écrire au temps du nationalisme by Alain Roy (Leméac Éditeur, 2014).

Marrying Hungary (Signature 2008) is a memoir originally commissioned by Leméac and published in French as Épouser la Hongrie (2004, trans. Aline Apostolska), and then in Serbian (Rad, 2005, trans. Aleksandra Mancic).

Leith is also the author of three novels:

Birds of Passage (Signature, 1993), which was reviewed as “an excellent first novel” in the Times Literary Supplement;

The Tragedy Queen (Signature, 1995), translated into French as Un Amour de Salomé (XYZ Éditeur, 2003, trans. Agnès Guitard), winner of the 2004 Governor General's Award for Translation; and

The Desert Lake (Signature, 2007).

She is the founder of the Blue Metropolis International Literary Festival in Montreal and owner of Linda Leith Publishing.

In November 2020 she was appointed an Officer of the Order of Canada.

For more information about her career and her books, please see her website: http://www.lindaleithauthor.com/