Hungarian Literature Quotes

My parents are Hungarian.

Making love to Aurelia was like rummaging through a card catalog in a deserted library, searching for one very obscure, little-read entry on Hungarian poetry.

Hungarian Language — savage it may be but of a beauty that has nothing human about it, with sonorities of another universe, powerful and corrosive, appropriate to prayer, to groans and to tears, risen out of hell to perpetuate its accent and its aura…words of nectar and cyanide.

Like many American readers, I was first introduced to Magda Szabo's work when New York Review Books reissued the Hungarian master's profound and haunting novel 'The Door.'

One of my proudest achievements is that when an authoritative book about Hungarian literature came out about a decade ago, there was a little article about me which said I was a Hungarian writer but pretending not to be. Bearing in mind I can hardly write a cheque in Hungarian, I was delighted to be included in the pantheon of Hungarian writers.

I came to feel that, in addition to Imre Kertesz, Hungary has produced at least three contemporary novelists who deserve the Nobel: Peter Nadas, Peter Esterhazy and Laszlo Krasznahorkai.

For some reason, I spent my early thirties reading as much postwar Hungarian fiction as I could get my hands on.

I'm very drawn to Eastern Europe, so I like a Hungarian writer who wrote in French called Emil Cioran; he was always good for giving me such a stir.

It's true, some senior Hungarian writers are not known for their laughter. There is a strong Germanic influence - an attitude that if it's enjoyable it can't possibly be literature.

There is a wonderful Hungarian literature, especially in lyric poetry.