Imre Kertész and Holocaust Literature
edited by Louise O. Vasvári and

Steven Tötösy de Zepetnek

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“Imre Kertész and Holocaust Literature is a wide-ranging, compelling examination of the Nobel Laureate’s novels and his position in Central and East European Holocaust literature. Acknowledging the ideologically divisive reception of Kertész’s Nobel Prize rooted in Hungary’s anti-Semitism and ethnic essentialism, the papers in the volume address underlying tensions regarding the nation’s Holocaust history and response to a writer indelibly shaped by Nazi and Communist totalitarianism. Essays by the international multidisciplinary group of scholars contributing to this path-breaking text reveal that the dilemma of Jewishness and Hungarianness at the heart of Kertész’s
fiction is inseparable from that of post-Holocaust Jewish-Hungarian identity. These nuanced, insightful readings demonstrate how the study of literature enacts a complex drama of culture raising substantive questions about the writer’s cultural and ethnic identity shaped by the Holocaust and by post-Holocaust Hungarian anti-Semitism. In addition to analyses of Kertész’s books within the context of Central European
totalitarian culture, the essays compare his oeuvre to Western Holocaust literature provoking consideration of an important writer whose work is known insufficiently in the English-speaking world. Editors Louise O. Vasvári and Steven Tötösy de Zepetnek have assembled important studies illuminating Kertész’s innovative, experimental style, as well as the literary and social relevance of his writing to comparative cultural and Holocaust studies.”
S. Lillian Kremer, Kansas State University

The first English-language volume on the work of Nobel in Literature 2002 Imre Kertész, the volume contains papers by scholars in Canada, Croatia, France, Germany, Hungary, New Zealand, and the USA, as well as historical papers about the background of the Holocaust in Hungary. Articles in the volume are "Imre Kertész and Hungarian Literature" by Enikö Molnár Basa, "Jewishness in Hungary, Imre Kertész, and the Choice of an Identity" by Sara Cohen, "The Aporia of Imre Kertész" by Robert Eaglestone, "Imre Kertész, Hegel, and the Philosophy of Reconciliation" by Amos Friedland, "Identities of the Jew and the Hungarian" by András Gerö, "Representing the Holocaust, Kertész's Fatelessness, and Benigni's La vita è bella" by Bettina von Jagow, "Imre Kertész's Fatelessness as Historical Fiction" by Julia Karolle, "Reading Imre Kertész in English" by Adrienne Kertzer, "Imre Kertész's Fatelessness and the Myth about Auschwitz in Hungary" by Kornélia Koltai, "The Historians' Debate about the Holocaust in Hungary" by András Kovács, "Imre Kertész and Hungary Today" by Magdalena Marsovszky, "Imre Kertész's Aesthetics of the Holocaust" by Sára Molnár, "The Dichotomy of Perspectives in the Work of Imre Kertész and Jorge Semprún" by Marie Peguy, "Imre Kertész and the Filming of Sorstalanság (Fatelessness)" by Catherine Portuges, "Danilo Kis, Imre Kertész, and the Myth of the Holocaust" by Rosana Ratkovcic, "Imre Kertész's Jegyzökönyv (Sworn Statement) and the Self Deprived of Itself" by Tamás Scheibner, "Imre Kertész's Kaddish for an Unborn Child" by Eluned Summers-Bremner, "Imre Kertész's Nobel Prize in Literature and the Print Media" by Steven Tötösy de Zepetnek, "Holocaust Literature and Imre Kertész" by Paul Várnai, "The Novelness of Imre Kertész's Fatelessness" by Louise O. Vasvári, and "The Media and Imre Kertész's Nobel Prize in Literature" by Judy Young. In addition to the papers about Kertész's work, the volume includes an as of yet in English unpublished text by Imre Kertész, "Galley Boat-Log (Gályanapló): Excerpt(s)" translated by Tim Wilkinson, a review article about books on Jewish Identity and anti-Semitism Central Europe by Barbara Breysach, and a "A Bibliography of Imre Kertész's Oeuvre and Publications about His Work" by Steven Tötösy.

ISBN: 1-55753-396-2

6 x 9

330 pages

Paper