Hungarian author Sándor Csoóri dies aged 86

Budapest, September 12 (MTI) – Hungarian writer, poet and politician Sándor Csoóri has died at the age of 86 after a long illness, the Government Information Office told MTI on Monday.

Born in Zámoly in central Hungary on February 3, 1930, Csoóri was a fiction writer and poet, as well as an essayist and screenwriter. He was an outspoken advocate of the rights of ethnic Hungarians living in a minority abroad. In his works, Csoóri wrote about rural Hungary and criticised the communist dictatorship’s impact on the human psychological and social well-being.

In the late 1980s he became a prominent member of the opposition to the regime of János Kádár and a founding member of the Hungarian Democratic Forum, helping to pave the way for Hungary’s transition to a democratic rule of law.

Csoóri was awarded the prestigious Kossuth Prize in 1990 and the Kossuth Grand Prize in 2012. He received the Herder Prize in 1981 and the Grand Prize of the Hungarian Academy of Arts in 2013. He became an Artist of the Nation in 2014.

Photo: gondolkodom.hu

Source: MTI