Abstract
A prize-winning Hungarian novelist discusses new developments in his country's literature — and the ways in which East-West politics can distort our perception of cultures ‘in-between’.
Peter Esterházy (38) is a member of a very special Central European family: his grandfather was Count Móric Esterházy, the pre-World-War I Prime Minister. He studied at a Roman Catholic school and then attended the Faculty of Mathematics at Budapest University.
Twelve years ago, he brought a long-awaited new voice and linguistic innovations to Hungarian literature. He is a virtuoso of the avant-garde, portraying Hungarian life, past and present, with extraordinary skill and humour.
Some of Esterházy's novels have been translated into and published in Danish, French, German, Italian, Polish and Swedish; English-speaking readers can as yet only guess his qualities on the basis of rough translations of the titles of his works. They include Don't Be a Pirate in Papal Waters (1977), A Novel of Production (1979), Who Warrants the Lady's Safety (1982), A Small Hungarian Pornography (1984), The Auxiliary Verbs of the Heart (1985), An Introduction to the Literature (1986), Seventeen Swans (1987) and The Mounted Swan (1988). Perhaps symptomatically, only A Small Hungarian Pornography is currently being translated for an American publishing house; but it is not quite what it seems to be. The novel deals with Big Hungarian Political Obscenities; the initials of these words happen to coincide with those of the Hungarian Communist Party.
Peter Esterházy has won three Hungarian literary awards in the last five years. The following talk, published here in an edited version, was given at a conference on international literature organised by the Wheatland Foundation in Lisbon earlier Ms year.