7+1 books from contemporary Hungarian writers you have to read

If you are interested in Hungarian writers, you might have already read the biggest literary masterpieces of the country: from Ferenc Molnár’s The Paul Street Boys to Magda Szabó’s The Door, Hungarian classics have been translated into multiple languages. If you are on the lookout for something new, the following eight books are the acclaimed works of contemporary Hungarian writers.

1. György Spiró: Captivity

Translated by Tim Wilkinson

One of The Wall Street Journal’s top picks for its list of Best Books of 2015, Captivity is an exciting and enlightening historical saga set in the time of Jesus. It tells the story of a Roman Jew on a quest for the Holy Land.

“The narrative follows Uri from Rome to Jerusalem and back, from prospectless dreamer to political operative to pogrom survivor—who along the way also happens to dine with Herod Antipas and Pontius Pilate and get thrown into a cell with a certain Galilean rabble-rouser. [A] deft combination of philosophical inquiry and page-turning brio should overcome that oft-mentioned American timidity toward books in translation,” The Wall Street Journal writes.

Photo: Restless Books

2. András Forgách: The Acts of My Mother

Translated by: Paul Olchváry

“He wanted to understand the past. Now he must live with the truth.”

Thirty years after the fall of the communist regime, Hungarian writer Andras Forgách was examining his family’s history. During his research, he unearthed a shocking truth: his mother had been recruited by the Hungarian Communist secret police. She had informed the regime not only about acquaintances but about family, friends, and even her own children. The Acts of My Mother is a story about family, lies, and the possibility of forgiveness.

Photo: Penguin Random House Canada

3. Péter Nádas: A Book of Memories

Translated by: Ivan Sanders and Imre Goldstein

Péter Nádas is a Kossuth and Franz Kafka Prize winner Hungarian writer, whose A Book of Memories, Susan Sontag called “the greatest novel written in our time, and one of the great books of the century.”

Originally published in 1986 after years of battles with censors, A Book of Memories is made up of three multilayered and interlinked first-person narratives. A young Hungarian writer in the 1970s and his love affair with a German poet and an ageing actress. A novel about a German aesthete, whose anti-bourgeois transgressions mirror that of the second narrator. A childhood friend presenting the story of a friendship with a now-dead narrator.

The book is a remarkable exploration of sexual, creative, and political desires, and a poignant sketch of twentieth-century Europe from an acclaimed Hungarian writer.

Photo: Macmillan Publishers

4. Krisztina Tóth: Pixel

Translated by: Owen Good

Thirty short stories, as pixels of a full picture, come together to complete Krisztina Tóth’s book. The short stories about love, grief, and failed self-determination, taken as a whole paint a nuanced picture of relationships. Humour, sorrow, and suffering characterise the individuals populating Tóth’s lively world who come from every age group and class: survivors of the communist regime and the Holocaust, edgy young city dwellers, or a miserable junkie who stumbles on board public transport, injured and high as a kite.

Hungarian Literature Online deemed Pixel  “deliberately fragmentary and puzzling; defying definition – a creation all its own,” writing that “Tóth has an unflinching gaze. She is not afraid to confront the sordid and the violent, as well as the foolish and unfortunate side of human nature. These stories are not designed to lift you up and buoy you with confidence – far from it. But there is an honesty that refreshes. This is life, she says. Just accept it.”

Photo: tothkrisztina.hu

5. Tibor Bödőcs: Luigi the Last

Translated by: Katalin Rácz

Tibor Bödőcs is one of the most popular Hungarian comedians. His 2022 novel, Luigi the Last, is a poignant satire about populism and dictatorships mapped out through a bumbling metaphor: politics is a circus, where clowns, power artists, and knife-throwers get all the glory.

In Circus Land, King Luigi and his sleuth celebrate the thirtieth anniversary of the regime. And there’s so much to celebrate! Thanks to the former Ringmaster, everything in Hetticania is coming up roses – quite literally: rose plantations cover the whole country (so no one is unemployed), fault-finders find faults only among themselves (unless they are abroad) – how could anyone of sound mind slander the very epitome of health, honesty, beauty, patriotism, and masculine power?

The book is more “than the current edition of the ‘dictators’ handbook’. [It does not] mystify those holding power, neither pro nor con, but presents them in the simplicity of their biological and spiritual needs […] the unrelenting satire profiles not only the “Cream of the Cream”, but also the whole society that applauds them, puts them and keeps them in power”, Népszava writes.

Photo: Helikon Kiadó

6. György Dragomán: The White King

Translated by: Paul Olchváry

Published in 2005, The White King has been translated into more than 30 languages, bringing international acclaim to Dragomán, and amplifying a unique new voice in contemporary Hungarian fiction.

The White King introduces us to life in an Eastern European dictatorship in the 1980s, as seen through the eyes of a teenage boy, Djata. Tense and disturbing, the book explores the violence within schools and families and the cruelty of adults and children in a regime that breeds brutality. How does an 11-year-old boy cope when his father is taken away in front of him? How can he deal with his new role in the family? What hopes are there for him in the storm of adolescence?

Dragomán’s “prose is scintillating and acrobatic, featuring serpentine sentences that bend with each turn of Djata’s mind. Disregarding standard punctuation, the novel’s language acquires a kind of trudging exuberance – part exhaustion, part frenzy – that amply conveys the boy’s mood,” writes The New York Times.

Photo: Goodreads

7. Andrea Tompa: The Hangman’s House

Translated by: Barnard Adams

The Hangman’s House, set in the 1970s and -80s, tells the story of a Hungarian family’s life in Romania under the dictatorship of Nicolae Ceaușescu. The dictator is everywhere throughout the story—in portraits in schoolbooks, in the empty food stores, on TV, in obligatory Party demonstrations. Most insidiously: in the dreams and nightmares of people.

The narrator is a teenager, simply called “Girl”, who tries to understand the cruelty of the period and her family’s situation in it: why her mother works three jobs, or why her father turns to alcohol. The brutality of the time, and the hardships of the family, though, do not turn Girl accusatory toward her family, instead, her narration is imbued with love and irony.

Photo: Seagull Books

+1: an upcoming translation of a Hungarian writer
László Krasznahorkai: Herscht 07769

Translated by: Ottilie Mulzet

The National Book Award winner’s tour de force novel about neo-Nazis, particle physics, and Johann Sebastian Bach.

The gentle giant Florian Herscht works for the head of a local neo-Nazi gang, who has taken him under his wing and gotten him a job as a graffiti cleaner. After attending physics classes, Florian becomes convinced that disaster is imminent: he is sure that all physical matter will be destroyed soon. So, he sets out to convince Chancellor Angela Merkel of the danger, writing letters to her.

Written in one cascading sentence spanning more than 400 pages, Krasznahorkai’s novel is a triumph: morality play, satire, and a devastating encapsulation of life’s helplessness all in one.

The English translation of Herscht 07769 is set to be released in fall 2024.

Photo: RCW Literary Agency

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