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Hungary

The covers of the six books shortlisted for the 2024 Gregg Barrios Prize on a juniper background:...
The National Book Critics Circle Appreciations for the 2024 Gregg Barrios Book in Translation Prize
By Tobias Carroll, Mandana Chaffa, Rebecca Hussey, Alina Stefanescu, Hannah Weber & Liz Wood
Six judges of the 2024 National Book Critics Circle’s Gregg Barrios Book in Translation Prize share their appreciations of the six shortlisted titles.
A pair of wire-rimmed glasses with a crack in one lens lying on a piece of striped fabric
Photo by Jorien Loman on Unsplash
Éva Popa
By Edina Szvoren
In a short story by EU Prize for Literature–winning author Edina Szvoren, tensions rise between a son and his mother’s lodger.
Translated from Hungarian by Ottilie Mulzet
The covers of the books featured in the Watchlist
The Watchlist: October 2022
By Tobias Carroll
Tobias Carroll recommends noteworthy new books in translation from Brazil, Egypt, Hungary, Colombia, South Korea, and Norway.
Peripatetics: The Essays of Jazmina Barrera, Karen Villeda, and Mariana Oliver
By Charlotte Whittle
These are essays with a roving gaze whose authors travel through geographic and intellectual spaces with the same ease with which we used to walk around in New York.
Visegrád
By Karen Villeda
Women were confined to reading prayer books and religious hymns. And they wrote in the margins. Centuries went by. Those marginalia are, in fact, the books I need to read.
Translated from Spanish by Charlotte Whittle
Road Stories: International Writing on Travel
By Susan Harris
Some of the writers here document their own trips, while others invent characters and send them on the road.
Open to Disagreement: Six Contemporary Hungarian Women Writers
By Erika Mihálycsa
An important slice of recent Hungarian writing is indebted to the literature of the 1980s and ’90s that subverts the ideological remainders entrenched in language.
Lionel Messi kicking a ball
Jimmy Baikovicius from Montevideo, Uruguay, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Woman Striker Has Killer Left Foot
By Réka Mán-Várhegyi
One sweltering summer morning, I wake up to find I’m Lionel Messi.
Translated from Hungarian by Owen Good
Multilingual
Frau Röntgen’s Hand
By Zsófia Bán
Oh God. The woman has vaporized.
Translated from Hungarian by Jim Tucker
MultimediaMultilingual
Moonlight Faces
By Kinga Tóth
it can end whenever, wherever.
Translated from Hungarian by Kinga Tóth & Owen Good
MultimediaMultilingual
The Tongue’s Story
By Krisztina Tóth
It’s because we don’t speak their language. That’s why they’re defiling our food.
Translated from Hungarian by Owen Good
MultimediaMultilingual
That Little Strip of Sunshine
By Zsuzsa Selyem
By the time I’d answered all his questions I recognized him: János Hell.
Translated from Hungarian by Jim Tucker & Erika Mihálycsa
MultimediaMultilingual
Working Name: Person
By Edina Szvoren
My parents know more about the Qahatika Indians than about my son.
Translated from Hungarian by Jim Tucker
Multilingual
The Magazine as Manifesto
By Meghan Forbes
The artistic production of a group of leftist artists, poets, and editors in Central Europe in the interwar period reflects an optimism for a “new Europe.”
Metropolis Dynamics
By Lászlo Moholy-Nagy
This marks the first time that the Hungarian version of “Metropolis Dynamics” has been translated with its graphic layout and original linocuts intact.
Translated from Hungarian by Irina Denischenko & Bradley Gorski
Writing from Hungary: An Introduction
By Judith Sollosy
If you’re interested in what makes contemporary Hungarian literature contemporary Hungarian literature, you will have to turn to someone else. All I can say is: it’s like this and it’s like that
Lou’s Last Letter to Feri’s Wife
By János Háy
Don’t go telling me what you told me Christine, ‘cause I’m not buying it, the thing about Feri going to T-Mobile and having them tap the voice mail on your cell phone.
Translated from Hungarian by Judith Sollosy
Slow Freight
By Sándor Tar
He felt a laced-up boot kick his face, then another.
Translated from Hungarian by Judith Sollosy
Oh, Those Chubby Genes
By Lajos Parti Nagy
Three homeless individuals. Except they're the size of the embassy.
Translated from Hungarian by Judith Sollosy
From “Gypsy Mandalas”
By Magda Szécsi
I realized early on inside my mother’s belly that I’d be born a Gypsy. The realization made me drown at least twice in the embryonic fluid
Translated from Hungarian by Judith Sollosy
The China Doll
By Ervin Lázár
You want us to exhume her?” Mrs. Bűtös said, trembling.
Translated from Hungarian by Judith Sollosy
From “Communist Monte Cristo”
By Noémi Szécsi
The state police came for Great Granddad only in April, and just when he’d made such a nice adjustment to the people’s republic and its tattered legitimacy!
Translated from Hungarian by Judith Sollosy
Blessed Margaret
By Virág Erdős
To a guy looking like the law was after him she gave Pest, and to some other homeless sorts, she gave Buda.
Translated from Hungarian by Judith Sollosy
The Toad Prince
By Mihály Kornis
Nobody is hated as much as I. Every day when I go to school, I think this will be the last.
Translated from Hungarian by Judith Sollosy
Kornél Esti’s Bicycle Or: The Structure Of The World
By Péter Esterházy
That rotten, stinking thief got on the bicycle carefully, respectfully, that’s great, he said, first I pick up speed, and with that, picking up speed, he took off quick as lightning
Translated from Hungarian by Judith Sollosy
Islamorada
By Rivka Keren
During the twilight hours of one day in January, the professor and his wife arrived at a small motel on the beach at Islamorada
Translated from Hebrew by Dalit Shmueli
Multilingual
From “El último lobo”
By László Krasznahorkai
He was doing nothing, not a damn thing, simply drifting, spending hours sitting in the Sparschwein with his first glass of Sternburg at his side [ . . . ]
Translated from Hungarian by George Szirtes
Esterházy Per Se: A Translator’s Ball Game with a Postmodern Author
By Judith Sollosy
Some authors thumb their noses at the difficulties they are creating for the translator, and they are right to do so; their job is to write, the translator's is to translate.
An Interview with Péter Esterházy
By Kellan Cummings
In this interview, we speak about some of the predominant themes in Esterházy's literature, particularly family and language.
Translated from Hungarian by Judith Sollosy
Barbed wire fence at early morning
Photo by Jannik on Unsplash
Haul
By György Dragomán
The bears are tame, I broke them in myself.
Translated from Hungarian by Paul Olchváry
Tired Theseus
By István László G.
You took down the pale blue garbage bag / with yogurt caps, banana skins, colors
Translated from Hungarian by István Geher
Crystal-Study
By István László G.
Your neckline, like a glacier / among the ice-slopes of your skin, displays
Translated from Hungarian by István Geher
The Jungle
By István László G.
It was dark like the inside of a / piano,
Translated from Hungarian by István Geher
Aqua Fortis
By István László G.
You don't deserve the Light.
Translated from Hungarian by István Geher
For the Voice of the Psalms
By István László G.
Hide me in the shadow of your wings,
Translated from Hungarian by István Geher
Love
By Esther Kinsky
Short said nothing, and no one found a word of comfort.
Translated from German by Martin Chalmers