Hungarian literature comes home to the Leipzig Book Fair

The four-day book fair will present the debut German-language books Christmas on the Danube by Noémi Kiss, The Long Shadow of the Guillotine by László F. Földényi, Our Unburied Past by László Végel and Fragmentation by Ákos Kormányos.

"It is a very good feeling to appear abroad. With new covers, new sentences. The books are transformed, changed, and hit the ground in a different way, something else is important in a book for the German reader," shared Noémi Kiss. "It always surprises me how intensely Leipzig audiences are interested in our literature, in new things and new trends. Nowadays, it's especially the works of women authors. Hungarian literature comes home to the Leipzig fair, and the readings are sold out," she said.

They have been working together for years with translator Eva Zádor: "We have become one voice in one book. The books are well received because of the literary translation. When the work is successful, it is the subject of numerous reviews, as well as conversations, interviews and podcasts. This is the first time that I have made a sound play of the short stories for German radio," the author said.

Balázs Keresztes, in charge of the Petőfi Cultural Agency's foreign affairs programmes, said that this year a series of excellent volumes will be presented in Leipzig, "which is particularly welcome in view of the regrettable decline in the number of applications for translation and publication support from German-speaking countries in recent years. The fact that, despite all this, outstanding Hungarian works are still being published in German is a testimony to the close cultural ties between the two language groups. We hope that we can make a substantial contribution to this cooperation in the future through our applications," he stressed.

The book fair will also be the occasion for the publication of the New Hungarian Fiction catalogue, edited by the literary critics Ágnes Balajthy, Balázs Buday and Róbert Smid, and edited by Margit Garajszki, a writer and PKÜ staff member.

• Imre Bartók: The Fall of Htrae (Libri)
• Zsombor Aurél Biró: It’s My Recurring Dream that I Wake up on My Father's Shoulders (Kalligram)
• Péter Bognár: The Fewer Christmases the Better (Magvető)
• Hegedüs Vera: Hold a Aass for Me (Kalligram)
• Zsolt Láng: A Fable of the Men (Jelenkor)
• Papp-Zakor Ilka: A Ventriloquist Searches for an Echo (Kalligram)
• Benedek Sarnyai: They’ve Forgotten Themselves (KMTG)
• Schillinger Gyöngyvér: Let ’Em All Rot (Kalligram)
• György Száraz Miklós: Damn Those Summers (Scolar)
• Mátyás Szöllősi: Phobia (Helikon)
• Gábor Vida: No-Man’s Town. A Transylvanian Midcult (Magvető)
• Závada Pál: Cinders and Grass (Magvető)

Autofiction, psychography, rural representation and historical fiction: the editors have tried to gather as many different genres and voices as possible.

"On the one hand, of course, we need to give an overview of recent publications, but on the other hand, this is not a catalogue in that sense alone; it is just as important to give authors who have managed to write work that we feel and know might resonate in certain countries because of their subject matter, the opportunity to make their work more widely known," says Róbert Smid.

It was therefore important that the selected works should be relatively easy to read for readers from other literary and cultural traditions, while at the same time being excitingly unusual, and that the publication should be able to show the richness and diversity of contemporary Hungarian literature. "In my opinion, this catalogue is not only important for the works of authors who are now canonical, but also because it is a way of introducing to the international public those one- or two-volume authors who do not yet have a foreign publisher", Ágnes Balajthy emphasised.

The Leipzig Book Fair will kick off the spring events, followed by a meeting with the Hungarian delegation in Bologna.