More than political speeches and formal acts, literature has an important role in sensitizing people to the suffering of others. Rather than doing that, however, the abundance of tear-jerker movies, streamlined teen lit, and often badly-written (and in some cases, forged) memoirs about the Holocaust have the opposite effect: creating what has been termed as…
2015, Literary trends across Europe
An important discussion in Hungary: Novels on Holocaust, Part 2
by Agnes Orzoy •
Published in English in 1989 by Macmillan, János Nyíri’s Battlefields and Playgrounds immediately became a success in the UK. However, this book is all but unknown in Hungary. Granted, it was published in Hungarian in 1990 (under the title Madárország), when the country was engrossed in the regime change, but even its new, 2014 edition…
2015, The Migrants
The Stuffed Barbarian/ Kitömött barbár
by Agnes Orzoy •
In Claude Berri’s film Jean de Florette, based on a novel by Marcel Pagnol, a city-dweller inherits a plot of land in fabulous Provence. Jean, played by Gérard Dépardieu, moves there with his wife and daughter, and makes enthusiastic plans to grow vegetables and breed rabbits. However, as his neighbours secretly block the freshwater spring,…
2015, Literary trends across Europe
Hungarian Literature Online (blog in English and Hungarian)
by Agnes Orzoy •
In 2004―that is, in ancient times, when online literary magazines were a relatively new phenomenon―I was working for the first Hungarian literary website, litera.hu. Litera pioneered a wholly new approach to the trends, works, and figures of Hungarian literature―an approach that made literature the concern of a wide audience, far beyond literati. As the site…