László Krasznahorkai

George Szirtes

Stuck in the middle of nowhere during days of endless rain, a dozen inhabitants of an isolated hamlet share schemes, crimes, infidelities--and even some dancing--at a local watering hole.

Satantango

Tells the story of a small hamlet in Hungary, near the end of the Communist period, on the brink of collapse following years of failure, betrayal, and aborted dreams.

Now in paperback, Satantango, the novel that inspired Bela Tarr s classic film, is proof that the devil has all the good times. Set in an isolated hamlet, the novel unfolds over the course of a few rain-soaked days. Only a dozen inhabitants remain in the bleak village, rank with the stench of failed schemes, betrayals, failure, infidelity, sudden hopes, and aborted dreams. Their world, in the words of the renowned translator George Szirtes is rough and ready, lost somewhere between the cosmic and tragic, in one small insignificant corner of the cosmos. Theirs is the dance of death. Into this world comes, it seems, a messiah "

In The Bill, László Krasznahorkai's madly lucid voice pours forth in a single, vertiginous, eleven-page sentence addressing Palma Vecchio, a sixteenth-century Venetian painter. Peering out from the pages are Vecchio's voluptuous, bare-breasted blondes, a succession of models transformed on the canvas into portraits of apprehensive sexuality. Alongside these women, the writer that Susan Sontag called “the Hungarian master of apocalypse” interrogates Vecchio's gift: Why does he do it? How does he do it? And why are these models so afraid of him even though he, unlike most of his contemporaries, never touches them? The text engages with the art, asking questions only the paintings can answer. “László Krasznahorkai's taut, almost explosive texts resemble prose poems more than short stories or conventional novella chapters, though they do not pretend to lyricism.”—Nation

For Palma Vecchio, at Venice

The Bill

Singapore Notebook & Blessed Isle

A poet's memoir of his mother that flows backwards through time, and through a tumultuous period of European history - a tender and yet unsparing autobiographical journey.In July 1975, Magda Szirtes died in the ambulance on the way to hospital after she had tried to take her own life. She was fifty-one years old. The Photographer at Sixteenspools into the past, through her exile in England, her flight with her husband and two young boys from Hungary in 1956 and her time in two concentration camps, her girlhood as an ambitious photographer, and the unknowable fate of her vanished family in Transylvania.The woman who emerges - with all her contradictions - is utterly captivating. What were the terrors and obsessions that drove her? The Photographer at Sixteenreveals a life from the depths of its final days to the comparable safety of its childhood. It is a book born of curiosity, of guilt and of love.

The Death and Life of a Fighter

The Photographer at Sixteen

Sándor Márai

What is it to be in love with a pathological liar and fantasist? Esther is, and has been for more than twenty years. Lajos, the liar, married her sister, and when she died, Lajos disappeared. Or did he? And Esther? She was left with her elderly cousin, the all-knowing Nunu, and a worn old house, living a life of the most modest comforts. All is well, but all is tired. Until a telegram arrives announcing that, after all these years, Lajos is returning with his children. The news brings both panic and excitement. While no longer young and thoroughly skeptical about Lajos and his lies, Esther still remembers how incredibly alive she felt when he was around. Lajos's presence bewitches everyone, and the greatest part of his charm?and his danger?lies in the deftness with which he wields that delicate power. Nothing good can come of this: friends rally round, but Lajos's arrival, complete with entourage, begins a day of high theater.

Esther's Inheritance

Sandor Marai

Helen Ivory

In Their Own Words is a celebration of the variousness of contemporary poets living and writing in the UK today. 56 poets talk about their own poetic voices and their work. Essential reading for anybody who cares about poetry.A backstage peek behind the poetry of some of the best contemporary UK writers. Edited by T.S. Eliot prize winner George Szirtes and Helen Ivory — two of the UK’s most respected poets and teachers.In Their Own Words is an examination of the voices writing in the UK today – the book addresses multiculturalism, page and stage, and LBG issues, as well as traditional ‘page’ poetry.This book is not retrospective, it is a representation of the poetry world as a living, breathing developing thing.Readers will get an insight into the many ways the poetic voice can develop – it’s a behind the scenes look at the poetics of the poetry.There is nothing currently available quite like it.

Contemporary Poets on Their Poetry

In Their Own Words

Offering an introduction to the playfulness of words, this is a collection of 50 riddles in verse for children, featuring many everyday topics such as household objects, natural phenomena, traffic lights and electricity.

The Red All Over Riddle Book

In 1756, after escaping from Venice's most notorious jail, Giacomo Casanova seeks refuge in the Italian village of Bolzano, where he once again embarks on a campaign of seduction, until the notorious lover meets his match at the hands of the woman who will ultimately defeat him. 75,000 first printing.

Casanova in Bolzano

From the winner of the 2015 Man Booker International Prize A novel of awesome beauty and power by the Hungarian master, Laszla Krasznahorkai. Winner of a 2005 PEN Translation Fund Award. War and War, Laszla Krasznahorkai's second novel in English from New Directions, begins at a point of danger: on a dark train platform Korim is on the verge of being attacked by thuggish teenagers and robbed; and from here, we are carried along by the insistent voice of this nervous clerk. Desperate, at times almost mad, but also keenly empathic, Korim has discovered in a small Hungarian town's archives an antique manuscript of startling beauty: it narrates the epic tale of brothers-in-arms struggling to return home from a disastrous war. Korim is determined to do away with himself, but before he can commit suicide, he feels he must escape to New York with the precious manuscript and commit it to eternity by typing it all on the world-wide web. Following Korim with obsessive realism through the streets of New York (from his landing in a Bowery flophouse to his moving far uptown with a mad interpreter), War and War relates his encounters with a fascinating range of humanity, a world torn between viciousness and mysterious beauty. Following the eight chapters of War and War is a short "prequel acting as a sequel," "Isaiah," which brings us to a dark bar, years before in Hungary, where Korim rants against the world and threatens suicide. Written like nothing else (turning single sentences into chapters), War and War affirms W. G. Sebald's comment that Krasznahorkai's prose "far surpasses all the lesser concerns of contemporary writing."

War & War

George Szirtes came to England as an eight-year-old refugee fleeing with his family after the Hungarian uprising. The poems in this collection reveal his ambiguous feelings towards his adoptive country.

An English Apocalypse

Although George Szirtes was born in Budapest, and spent his early childhood in Hungary before coming to England as a refugee, it wasn't until 1984 that he began to write about his native city. This book gathers together his poems on Hungarian themes, exploring universal issues of loss, danger and exile. Poetry Book Society Recommendation.

The Budapest File

Colin Ford

Péter Baki

Examines how these photojournalists, all of whom left their native country to work in Europe and America, established Hungary as a crucible of photography and explores the influence of their vision and orginality on other photographers.

Hungarian Photography in the Twentieth Century. Brassaï, Capa, Kertész, Moholy-Nagy, Munkácsi

Eyewitness

The poems in Portrait of my Father in an English Landscape are about childhood, language, and growing up in a foreign country, England. George Szirtes writes particularly about his own father, captured in images, anecdotes, and sudden, vivid fragmentary stories. The bravura formal structure of these remarkable sequences continues Szirtes's tradition of writing long poem sequences, as well as linked sonnets, and contributes to his personal history of Europe.

Portrait of My Father in an English Landscape

A poet's memoir of his mother that flows backwards through time, through a tumultuous period of European history - a tender and yet unsparing autobiographical journey. **RADIO 4's BOOK OF THE WEEK FROM 15 March 2021** "A truly remarkable book . . . fiercely compelling" EDMUND DE WAAL *WINNER OF THE JAMES TAIT BLACK MEMORIAL PRIZE* *SHORTLISTED FOR THE JEWISH WINGATE PRIZE* "I've read no memoir that moved me more" MIRANDA SEYMOUR "The writing is always scrupulous . . . [a] compelling memoir" BLAKE MORRISON "Beautifully written and utterly compelling" Sunday Times "An original, probingly thoughtful memoir" EVA HOFFMANN In July 1975, George Szirtes' mother, Magda, died in an ambulance, on her way to hospital after attempting to take her own life. She was fifty-one years old. This memoir is an attempt to make sense of what came before, to re-construct who Magda Szirtes really was. The Photographer at Sixteen moves from her death, spooling backwards through her years as a mother, through sickness and exile in England, the family's flight from Hungary in 1956, her time in two concentration camps, her girlhood as an ambitious photographer and her vanished family in Transylvania. The woman who emerges, fleetingly, fragmentarily - with her absolutism, her contradictions, her beauty - is utterly captivating. What were the terrors and obsessions that drove her? The Photographer at Sixteen reveals a life that is at Magda Szirtes from the depths of the end to the comparable safety of the photographer's studio where she first appears as a small child. It is a book born of curiosity, guilt and love.

A BBC RADIO 4 BOOK OF THE WEEK

The title-poem of George Szirtes' "The Burning of the Books and Other Poems" is the core of this collection of narrative sequences by a writer who came to Britain after the Hungarian Uprising. Two further sequences are concerned with history and documentary. Poetry Book Society Recommendation, shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize.

The Burning of the Books and Other Poems

Carol Watts

"The first 28 verses appeared in the Long Poem Magazine Issue 10, October 2013"--Title page verso.

A Poem Sequence

Fifty Six

Hungarian literature can be characterized as the literature of anxiety. Throughout the 1900s, as Europe's political and social fortunes changed, Hungary's writers reflected on those changes, absorbing and distilling them in work of documentary, poetic, or comically grotesque power. This anthology of fiction and poetry begins by setting out some of the major landmarks from the end of the Second World War, then concentrates on the period before, during, and after the key date of 1989, when Central Europe was transformed once again. The volume traces that history of change from Marai's wartime diaries, into the Stalinist period with the one-minute novels of Istvan Orkeny, past the paradoxical post-modernist humanism of Peter Esterhazy, and through the haunted waste-tracts of Laszlo Krasznahorkai. It celebrates the anxiety, agitation, crying, and whispering of the Hungarian literary imagination.

George Szirtes

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