Read Central Read Central 2010.pdf · Ádám Bodor, Attila Bartis, László Darvasi, György Dragomán, Krisztián Grecsó, Péter Esterházy, László Krasznahorkai, Szilárd Rubin

Read Central Frankfurt 2010 | 1

FrankfurtBook Fair

2010

Read Central!

2 | Read Central Frankfurt 2010

Rights list Spring 2010

BeletrinaPublishing house

FrakturaPublishing house

MagvetőPublishing house

cover: Milena Dravić, photo from movie WR Mysteries of the Organism by Dušan Makavejev


Why Read Central!

When Ferenc Molnár fled to New York – as many Eastern Europeans of the day – the first English sentence he learned was “Separate checks, please!” as he remembered later. Since the end of the Austro-Hungar-ian Empire – which was the second largest country in Europe after the Russian Empire – the nations have been separating continuously; but in many newer or older, fragile and prickly fragments of the one-time Monarchy-greenery we’ve been preserving our common cultural roots and the memories of our incomparable history: this special Babel-story of many different languages and identities inside one monstrous body of power. These memories of the past Central Babel are echoing in the recent Central Babel. After the Turkish, the Habsburg and the Russian occupation we’re sitting around the same table – still here, far from America, but we pay our checks separately. And we’re continuously trading between one another, dealing with things and words, ordinary and uncommon values.

On a hot August evening in 1934 a unknown flying object landed somewhere between today Hungary, Austria, Slovenia and Croatia. If the balloon would be flying some years before, it would have landed somewhere in the centre of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Now it was landing in pure borderland, in terra incognita. Out of the balloon came the Belgian professor Cosyns, and his assistant Van der Elst. They spoke only French and it was not easy for the ship-wrecked to communicate with the villagers, that newer saw a balloon before. It would be much easier if they knew a few words of any of the many languages spoken in this part of the world, or at least desperately shouting out names of stunning writing in this languages. But no, the Belgians spoke only French. What a pity for them!

The idea of Read Central! is rooted on somewhere here. Our teamwork sign the unbordered born place of the Central European literature which is – as we believe – a unique and charismatic voice in the choir of world literature. Our authors and their books always can add special components to the entire har-mony. Some of them are translated to several languages but some are completely unknown. We’d like to select the bests from the four countries year by year and represent the rights to those books together at events, in catalogues and on the internet. But the more important is the worldwide presence of the


authors. We – as publishers – are the secretaries behind the typewriters when you enter into an office somewhere in Central Europe. Have a comfortable seat and enjoy the mixed flavor of literary lives and live world literature!


BeletrinaBeletrina is one of the most highly esteemed literary imprints in Slovenia.Beletrina Academic Press has gained its reputation primarily by introducing prominent works of con-temporary world and national literature to Slovene readers. Our goal is to set standards for a new pub-lishing philosophy which, in addition to focusing on noncommercial titles and giving priority to inventiveness, freshness and directness, respects authors and invests considerable effort in the promo-tion of their work.Beletrina‘s list of contemporary Slovene authors is essential, focused as it is on highly regarded writers who not only attract substantial attention today but promise to flourish for decades to come. Though the imprint emphasizes younger prose writers and poets, many older and established authors have contributed to its richness and diversity.

BELETRINA ACADEMIC PRESSBorštnikov trg 2, SI-1000 LjubljanaSloveniaP: 00 386 1 200 37 00F: 00 386 1 252 26 18E: [email protected]

International marketing, Foreign rights and permissions Renata Zamida [email protected]


FrakturaIndependent publishing house Fraktura has been established in April 2002 with an aim to publish quality literary fiction, both Croatian and international. In our programme we tend to select works of authors from all over the world who are already well known in their countries and even throughout the world and have not yet been translated in Croatian. We also tend to present an author by publishing more of his works – novels, short stories and essays. Besides literary fiction our publishing programme comprises fine art books and non-fiction books concerning wide domain of culture, literature and art. By now we have published over 200 books. For our Croatian authors we hold rights for translation and we represent them on foreign markets. By now the works by Mirko Kovač, Igor Štiks, Daša Drndić, Slađana Bukovac, Sibila Petlevski have been published or are being prepared in more than 40 editions.Since 2004 our books, authors and translators have won more than 20 prizes and awards, both national and international.

FRAKTURA PUBLISHING HOUSEGorica 30, IvanecHR-10290 ZaprešićCroatiaP: + 385 1 335 78 63F: + 385 1 335 83 20E: [email protected]

Foreign rights and permissionsSeid Serdarević: [email protected] Serdarević: [email protected]


MagvetőMagvető is a distinguished and award-winning publisher of contemporary Hungarian fiction with au-thors including the Nobel Prize winner Imre Kertész well as names known beyond Hungary such as Ádám Bodor, Attila Bartis, László Darvasi, György Dragomán, Krisztián Grecsó, Péter Esterházy, László Krasznahorkai, Szilárd Rubin and Krisztina Tóth. We also publish a selection of the finest from world literature.Magvető also accommodates marvellous, contemporary poets – working in often very typical Hungar-ian styles but imbued with aspects of both the classical and the contemporary from other cultures.Magvető was founded in 1955 by the Ministry of Culture with the sole purpose of publishing contem-porary, Hungarian writers. The company was heavily restructured and privatised after the transition in 1989 but has retained an almost identical literary profile.Magvető now publishes 40-45 new titles – fiction, poetry, drama and nonfiction – each year. We also handle the foreign rights of the majority of our publications and are proud to say that many of our Hungarian authors are published in other countries. Our latest worldwide success was with György Dragomán’s novel, The White King. The rights to this book have already been sold to more than 30 countries.

MAGVETő PUBLISHING HOUSEH-1086 Budapest, Dankó u. 4-8.HungaryPhone: +36 1 235 50 20Fax: + 36 1 318 41 07www.magveto.huContacts:Mátyás Dunajcsik (Foreign Rights):[email protected]árközy Bence (Editor-in-Chief):[email protected]

For further information on the translation grants of Hungarian books please contactTranslation Fund of the Hungarian Book FoundationH-1146 Budapest, Hermina u. 57.HungaryPhone/Fax: +36 1 384 56 76www.hungarianbookfoundation.huContact:Dóra Károlyi (Head of HBF):[email protected]@hungarianbookfoundation.hu


LOjZE KOVAčIč (1928-2004) was born in Basel, Switzerland, to a German mother and a Slovene father. Experts and readers alike consider him to be the finest Slovene writer of the 20th century. His body of work is today considered as classic: in his writing Kovačič desperately pursues his own fate, the fate of a newcomer and the fate of a nation simultaneously. All his life he was believed to be a recluse and one who shied away from the literary spotlight, but apart from his writing and translating he also pursued his interests in puppetry and acted as a mentor to young, aspiring writers. In addition to his novels and short stories he also wrote children’s literature. All his books have autobiographical tendencies and give an account of the author’s days since he left Basel as a child and came to his father’s homeland, former Yugoslavia, where he had not learned the Slovene language until he was a teenager – and quickly became an influential stylist. His most important books are his novels Kristalni čas (Crystal Time), Resničnost (Reality), Prišleki (The Newcomers), and his latest, Otroške stvari (Things of Childhood). On its transla-tion into German (DTV Publishing House) in 2004, Kovačič’s novel Prišleki (The Newcomers) topped the best novel charts for months and has since then aroused interest all over Europe. In Slovenia it was the critic’s choice for the best Slovenian Novel of the 20th Century and in the recent years Newcomers were published in Spain (Siruela) and France (Éditions du Seuil). Awards: Prešeren Award for Life Achievement, Novel of the Year Award for the novel Kristalni čas (Crystal Time), Novel of the Year Award for the novel Otroške stvari (Things of Childhood).

Lojze KovaËiË


RESNIČNOSTRealityNovel, 1972, 180 pages

In his novel Resničnost, 1972, Kovačič – in third person – describes the two and a half years he spent as a soldier and a convict, and upon return as a homeless person. He became a soldier indelibly marked by the banishment of his family and by his critical opinion of the authorities, which was considered reac-tionary and intolerable. He was also charged with a revolt against the army, which meant a revolt against the state; he was tortured into confessing his guilt and as a punishment had to clear away mines. In difficult and dangerous circumstances he lost touch with reality, and even started to have doubts about whether reality existed at all.The novel in a deeply moving and yet sovereign literary way reveals the characteristics of Lojze Kovačič’s prose. Through uncompromising introspection, without trying to conceal his failures and humiliations, his gentleness and cruelty, in this novel as well the author achieved a high level of reality and literary persuasiveness, which bring to the surface what is the most mysterious in a human being. By depicting the various layers of his own life Kovačič speaks about people in general, about their bright and dark sides.

World rights available


FERI LAINŠčEK (b. 1959) has in addition to his many novels also written short stories, screenplays, children’s books, puppet and radio plays, and popular music lyrics. He is one of the most popular and renowned Slovene authors, his books regularly top the bestseller lists and garner critical praise at the same time. Four of his novels were made into highly successful main feature films. His extensive ouvre is best distinguished by his characteristic Pannonian sentiment, arising from the author’s sensitive perception of his home region, the flat Prekmurje at the border with Hungary. His works have been described as magical realist. Their protagonists are often members of minorities, at times outlaws (gypsies, artists, circus performers, fortune-tellers, etc.). His stories infiltrate the grim realities of epochal twentieth-century events: wars, floods, the shifting of borders, etc. His novel Petelinji zajtrk (Rooster’s Breakfast) was made into the most successful Slovene main feature film ever, while his prose works regularly become bestsellers. His books are translated into English, German, Hungarian, Croatian, Slovak and Italian. Awards: Prešeren Award for the novel Namesto koga roža cveti (Instead of whom does the flower bloom), Novel of the Year Award for the novel Namesto koga roža cveti (Instead of whom does the flower bloom), Novel of the Year Award for the novel Muriša

Feri LainπËek


LOČIL BOM PENO OD VALOV I’ll Part the Foam from the WavesNovel, 2003, 320 pages

The bestselling novel Ločil bom peno od valov (I’ll Part the Foam from the Waves) is framed by events at the end of World War I. The main protagonists are Ivan Spransky, an upstart gold dealer, willing to do any-thing to get rich and famous, and his young wife Elica, who sees their marriage as her chance to escape from the countryside and become a townswoman. However, the loveless match soon turns out to be a disaster. This intimate drama, brimming with emotion and passion, which sweeps the protagonist to a moving finale, is skillfully set in a historical place and time when the world was literally falling apart due to war.

The Slovenian novel of the year. — MLADINA Weekly

The novel not only brings together a host of extraordinary characters and their destinies, but also portrays the irreplaceable and unique atmosphere of the ancient, bourgeois town Sobota, which pros-pered during both World Wars.I’ll Part the Foam from the Waves is a novel of inner liberation, salvation and the possibility of forgiveness. Lainšček focuses on the questions of individual freedom, the search for love and the liberation of the erotic from the bodily.— DNEVNIK Daily

Rights sold to:Croatia, Novi Liber&Europapress


jANI VIRK (b. 1962) holds degrees in German Language Studies and Comparative Literature Studies, his published work includes novels, short stories, essays and translations from German (Bernhard, Roth, Artmann, Canetti). His professional work is linked to the media: he is the managing editor of the arts and culture programme at the Slovene national television. In his youth he was a member of the national ski team. He has travelled extensively and once made his living as a manual labourer. jani Virk is one of the most prolific Slovene writers; his best works are: the novel Zadnja Sergijeva skušnjava (Sergij’s Final Temptation, 1995), 1885: Potres (Earthquake, 1995) and Smeh za leseno pregrado (Laughter From Beyond the Wooden Barrier). In addition, his book Pogled na Tycho Brahe (A View of Tycho Brahe) is regarded as one of the finest short story collections independent Slovenia has produced. His writing is characterized as neorealist, honed by metaphysical questions which deal with the isolated man, undecided between physical necessity and yearning. Awards: Prešeren Award for Pogled na Tycho Brahe (A View of Tycho Brahe)

Jani Virk


LJUBEZEN V ZRAKULove in the AirNovel, 2009, 185 pages

The protagonist is a middle-aged divorcee, a music teacher, fond of Santana and Marquez and a single parent to Ula, an inquisitive daughter, who gives meaning to his life. At times he is a little angry and intolerant, mostly towards his wife’s new boyfriend. Blaž is obviously a magnet for women who, like him, aren’t capable of making final and radical decisions; the first copulation takes place in the compart-ment of a night train en route from Steiermark to Ljubljana. His steady mistress is married to his colleague from the music school, he has a fling with the neighbour from the apartment above, who is a fervent follower of Lacan, Spinoza and in general a philosopher down to the bone, married, of course. He then flirts with the divorced secretary at the school, but is probably turned off by the prospect of it becoming more serious and permanent. The last one, who isn’t meant to be either, is a Scandinavian woman he meets during his study trip in Mexico, but he is again unable to make a decision. When we are at last full of hope that he will let himself go in the hustle and bustle of Latin American cities and start anew, without the heavy personal luggage, all Blaž experiences is a heavy dizziness, anxiety and mostly fear from the endless possibilites of his return as he flies home.



The novelist DAŠA DRNDIć was born in Zagreb in 1946. She studied English language and literature at the Faculty of Philology in Belgrade. As a Fulbright scholar, she studied at the Southern Illinois Univer-sity, and also afterwards at Case Western Reserve University. She worked as an editor for the publishing house “Vuk Karadžić”, and also at Radio-television Belgrade, and as an English language teacher at the Public University “Đuro Salaj”.She teaches modern British literature and English language in the Anglo Studies depart ment at the University in Rijeka, Croatia. D. Drndić publishes prose, literary cri ticism, analytical texts, translations and plays. Her published works include: Put do subote (Way to Saturday), 1982; Kamen s neba (Stone from heaven), 1984; Marija Czę sto howska još uvijek roni suze ili Umiranje u Torontu (Maria Częstohowska still shedding tears or Dying in Toronto), 1997; Canzone di guerra, 1998; Totenwande, 2000; Doppelgänger, 2002; Leica format, 2003; Sonnenschein, 2007 and April u Berlinu (April in Berlin), 2009.

Daπa DrndiÊ


APRIL U BERLINUApril in BerlinNovel, 2009, 388 pages

In her new book April in Berlin, Daša Drndić uncompromisingly towards herself, towards her characters and readers, towards history, researches the destinies of emigrants and immigrants that have marked the twentieth century. Through personal stories, her own as well as those of her interlocutors, of noted and well-known people but also of so-called ordinary, “insignificant”, individuals, Drndić creates a big story. April u Berlin explores and dissects the history of Middle Europe, that imaginary yet existing area that has, more than by its geographical facts, been defined by its inhabitants and their destinies, their migrations determined both by economy and politics. The people whose lives have been moulded by politics and history, who have for generations been moving throughout Europe, but also throughout the world, thus turn Middle Europe into much more than a geographic point of reference – they trans-form it into a human map. Precisely that human map which marked the twentieth century and is making an imprint on the twenty-first, that code inscribed into human fates, is what Daša Drndić reveals and offers through her book, whether it be by narrating her own story, that of the fate of her family, or the stories of real and fictional characters she directly communicates with. As if through a kaleidoscope, the author enters the intimate world of every reader, making him start a personal quest of his own and his family’s past.


BY THE SAME AUTHOR:

SONNENSCHEINNovel, 2007, 480 pages

Rights sold to:United Kingdom, MacLehose PressFrance, GallimardSlovak Republic, KalligramHungary, KalligramPoland, CzarneThe Netherlands, De GeussSlovenia, Modrijan, 2009


IVANA ŠOjAT-KUčI was born in Osijek in 1971, where she completed her basic education. She spent several years in Belgium, where she received a university degree in French. In 2000 she published her first book of poetry, Hiperbole (Hyperboles), after winning an award for the best unpublished manuscript at a poetry festival in Drenovci. Her novel Šamšiel won an award at the Kozarčevi dani (Kozarčevi Days) festival in Vinkovci. She has published two further collections of poetry, Uznesenja (Ascensions) 2003 and Utvare (Phantoms) 2005, a collection of short stories, Kao pas (Like a Dog) 2006, and a collection of essays, I past će sve maske (And all the masks will fall) 2006. Excerpts from her unpublished poetry collec-tion written in French, Saint Espoir, were published in the Belgian literary magazine, Le Fram. The collection was nominated best manuscript by the Poetic and Literary Society of Kraainem, Brussels, in 1999. She also works as a literary translator, and has translated more than 20 books from English and French.

Ivana ©ojat-KuËi


UNTERSTADTNovel, 2009, 400 pages

The novel Understadt tells the story of an urban family of German origin living in Osijek from the end of the nineteenth till the end of the twentieth century. It is narrated through the portrayal of the destinies of four generations of women – a great grandmother, a grandmother, mother, and a daughter – their shattered illusions, the education of their children, the historical events that brutally lash out at them. Ivana Šojat-Kuči creates a world rich in detail and nuance, all her characters, both major and minor, are expressive and suggestive, abundant in virtues and flaws, complex and multi-dimensional, as life itself is. By depicting a clash of generations through the female characters of a family, the author creates a world in which, often due to bizarre strokes of fate or wrongly selected life-cards, both horrible and beautiful events occur. Yet the central theme, running through all the generations and all the characters, is that of hiding away from the past, fleeing from it, concealing it, which sooner or later leads to traumas and misunderstandings. Unterstadt is a book about a family and a town, written in the manner of the best and greatest modernist novels. Through the history of one family, it speaks of the twentieth century in a multiethnic town, of dictatorships, of wrongly selected sides, of fate which one can hardly defy. Untersdadt reveals the richness of Ivana Šojat-Kuči’s narrative talent, and it is thus not surprising that she has emerged as one of the most interesting writers of contemporary Croatian prose.

Awards:Vladimir Nazor award (2010)


MIRKO KOVAč was born on December 26, 1938 on the borderline between Montenegro and Bosnia and Herzegovina. He studied dramaturgy at the Academy of Performing Arts in Belgrade. He is an author of the following novels: Gubilište, 1962; Moja sestra Elida, 1965; Malvina, 1971; Ruganje s dušom, 1976; Vrata od utrobe, 1978; Uvod u drugi život, 1983; Kristalne rešetke, 1995; Grad u zrcalu, 2007. He has published collections of short stories, four books of essays, book of screenplays. He also published a book of letters Knjiga pisama with Filip David, 1998. He has written screenplays for numerous movies. Since 2003, Djela Mirka Kovača (Work of Mirko Kovač) are being published in Fraktura’s edition. He is a winner of many respected literary awards, including the NIN’s award (1978, 1986), Andrić’s award (1980), Tucholsky Prize (1993), Herder Prize (1995), award Bosanski stećak (2003), award Vileni-ca (2003), also Vladimir Nazor award (2008), August Šenoa award (2008), Award Meša Selimović (2008), july 13th award (2008), Njegoš award (2009) and jutarnji list award (2010).

Mirko KovaË


GRAD U ZRCALUCity In The MirrorNovel, 2007, 352 pages

City in the mirror is a majestic crescendo of Mirko Kovač’s former prose. A contemporary classic, it ex-plores the harsh and beautiful lands of his native region and the destinies of its inhabitants at the crossroads of the Mediterrean and the Balkans. In City in the mirror, the lead character is a writer who describes his growing up, his family and the landscapes of his childhood. Like the heroes in Kovač’s earlier novels, the narrator is both gentle and at the same time cruel, as are the people of his region. In City in the mirror, Kovač slowly reveals the story of one family, and in so doing creates a magnificent dedication to a forgotten time in which miracles were still possible. Principally, this is a novel about a father, and the fathers who can no longer be found. The City in the mirror as dreamt by the hero of this book is Dubrovnik, a perfect city, at once close and distant, an eternal place of longing and craving. City in the mirror is Mirko Kovač’s greatest work to date, the crown jewel amongst his works, a novel worth waiting for, for in it – the idea that life is what we remember, not what we lived – is brought to the fore.

Awards:Vladimir Nazor award (2008)August Šenoa award (2008)Award Meša Selimović (2008)Kiklop Prize for the best literary work of the year (2008)july 13th award (2008)

Rights sold to:Germany, DuMontBelgium, MEO Edition 2010Republic of Kosovo, KohaItaly, Emanuela Zandonai Editore 2010Hungary, Magvető 2010Serbia, B92 2009Macedonia, BlesokPoland, Borderland Foundation


Grecsó KrisztiánKRISZTIÁN GRECSó was born in 1977. He works as an editor for Élet és Irodalom, the most prestigious literary magazine of the country. Grecsó has written five books and won the most prestigious Hugarian prizes. He lives in Budapest. For further information visit www.grecso.hu


ISTEN HOZOTTLong Time No SeeNovel, 2005, 319 pages

Grecsó’s first volume of extended fiction is a coming-of-age novel; a singular detective story which brings unusual events in the life of a provincial village in Hungary. An orphan, Gergely has to leave the village as a young boy to pursue his studies, marking the break-up of the Ede Klein Club. He returns as an adult to explore his roots and starts to ask questions about his past and village history.He suspects that Ede Klein, the man after whom the children’s club is named and who was expelled from the village in 1948, may have been his father, although in the end that does not prove to be the case. However, a blood libel case actually did occur in Szegvár in 1948 resulting in the expulsion of one of its residents. The Klein diaries, written to Aunt Panni (who may be Gergely’s mother), occupy an important role in the village: although they don’t know anything about it for certain, everyone has their own interpretation, wether they think it contains phophecies of the future or reveals dark secrets from the past.Mystical matters play a major role in the novel with threads of superstition and local lore weaving their way through its fabric, the roots of which stem back to an unusual religiosity, pagan belief, and frequent drunkenness: shadows without their owners appear on the streets and the hair of young girls turns grey overnight. Masses of marvellous subsidiary stories about the strange residents of the village, their lives both tragic and comic, provide the reader with an insight into the realities of rural Hungarian society.

“His wandering motifs and marvellous depiction, cast in his own personal ‘Grecsó idiom’, with every day miracles familiar from the works of magic realist authors, propel the author to the forefront of younger fiction writers in Hungary.”– Népszabadság

Rights sold to: Croatia, FrakturaItaly, H2OCzech Republic, Kniha ZlinGermany, ClaassenSlovenia, DidaktaTurkey, Acik Defter

(Portrait by Barna Burger.)


Rubin SzilárdSZILÁRD RUBIN was born in 1927. He has written five books, two of which have earned him a late, but worldwide recognition: his unique and concise writing, mixing sentimentality with cruel self-exami-nation has been compared to works of Marcel Proust, William Faulkner and F. Scott Fitzgerald. German rights to his short novel Római Egyes (Roman Numeral One) have also been sold to Rowohlt Verlag.


CSIRKEJÁTÉK Chicken PlayNovel, 1963 / 2004, 214 pages

The title refers to a game where players have to hold out sitting on rails as long as possible despite a train rushing near. The novel is the story of two young lovers in post-World War II Hungary. Attila is a poor, aspiring writer, and Orsolya is the descendant of a rich bourgeois German family. Attila felt drawn to Orsolya since they were children, but he dares speak to her for the first time only after the war, when she returns from burned down Dresden to her former home town near Budapest, still marked by her recovery from Typhus. Because her family is German, their former riches are all gone, and they have to rebuild from scratch their pharmacy which they had once owned. In contrast, Attila seems to emerge as a winner under the new socialist rule – so the two form an unlikely coalition turned upside down. But the obstacles Attila and Orsolya face are strikingly similar to the old days: Orsolya’s family objects to the relationship, and they quite openly point out to Attila that they don’t consider him a good match for Orsolya.Soon, Attila and Orsolya start hurting and humiliating each other despite their love. Orsolya wants to end their relationship, but Attila keeps harassing her until she agrees to marry him. However, on the first night of their honeymoon he finds out that she only agreed to the wedding so that she could take up a job in Budapest, and she insists on getting a divorce as soon as possible.Attila’s obsession with Orsolya and his refusal to let go of his childhood dreams becomes overpowering, and it loses him all his friends who try to reason with him. In the finishing chapter, Attila watches Orsolya and her new husband though an opera glass at the airport twenty years after they first fell in love, but this time he has no one waiting for him at home.

“It is really rare to read such a detailed examination of self-ugliness in Hungarian with a lack of senti-mentalism and the cold fire of dispassionate curiosity. It is a naked, pagan look, not objective but straight and outright. Rare indeed. Calmness. Calmness after defeat, or even in shame; calmness in hysteria: you get what you got. It’s the calmness that makes this book unique; a meteor, a Martian – but still.”– Péter Esterházy

Rights sold to: Germany, RowohltSlovakia, SlovartSpain, Backlist

(Portrait by Gábor Gáspár.)


KRISZTINA TóTH was born in 1967. She has written two books of short stries, and is one of Hungary’s most highly acclaimed young poets. She has won several awards, and her poetry has been translated into many languages. She lives in Budapest where, apart from writing and translating (from French), she designs and produces stained-glass windows. For further information visit www.tothkrisztina.hu

Tóth Krisztina


VONALKÓDBarcodeShort Stories, 2006, 186 pages

This is the first work of prose from a remarkable poet. It contains fifteen short stories, each having subtitle containing the expression line/bar.The seventh story, Warm Milk, has the subtitle “Barcode” – it is about an American girl, Kathy, who visits her friend in Budapest in the early eighties. Kathy disrupts her host’s life, edges her out of her room, and unravels her relationship with her boyfriend, Robi. The young girl eventually begins to consider suicide. Barcode acts as a metaphor for Western goods and therefore symbolises an unreach-able world faraway from Hungary.The narrator of the stories is either a young girl or a young woman, depending on the reader’s interpre-tation of each story and some may see her as the same person all the way through. However, every action is seen from a woman’s point of view: childhood acquaintances, school camps, love, children, deceit, and journeys set against the backdrop of the Kádár era towards its close.The body, especially the body in pain, carries a central position in the work. Tóth often links the ailing human body to the wounded bodies of animals and the structures of buildings. And she also does a fair share of humoring the body. Directly alongside moments of the absurd, Tóth peppers her stories with the brutal and the grotesque. She builds a narrative world which is both tragic and comic. Her world is at once unsettling and invigorating as she leads the readers on a romp through everyday existence distilled to its extremes, with all of its attendant traumas, serendipities and vagaries in the spotlight.

“In Vonalkód she takes the reader on a wild ride, alternately provoking bursts of laughter and gasps of horror, often in the span of a single page.” – Rachel Miller

Rights sold to: Bulgaria, ErgoCzech Republic, Agite/FraCzech Republic, Tympanum (audio book)Germany, LuchterhandFrance, GallimardFinland, AvianSerbia, B92Spain, El Nadir

(Portrait by judit Marjai.)


FUNDING POSSIBILITIES

CROATIAMinistry of Culture of the Republic of CroatiaHR-1000 Zagreb, Runjaninova 2Croatiawww.min-kulture.hrP: + 385 1 4866 666

HUNGARYTranslation Fund of the Hungarian Book FoundationH-1146 Budapest, Hermina u. 57HungaryP: +36 1 384 56 76www.hungarianbookfoundation.hu

SLOVENIASlovenian Book Agency (jAK)Tržaška cesta 21000 LjubljanaP: +386 (0)1 369 58 20F: +386 (0)1 369 58 [email protected]

Department for Literature and Reading Promotion Head of Department: Dubravka Đurić Nemec P: + 385 1 4866 431 E: [email protected]

Contact:Károlyi Dóra (Head of HBF)[email protected]@hungarianbookfoundation.hu

The Trubar FoundationSlovene Writers’ Association for the Trubar Foundation Tomšičeva 12 SI – 1000 Ljubljana E: [email protected] http://www.drustvo-dsp.si/si/drustvo_slovenskih_pisateljev/dejavnosti/567/detail.html


CONTACTS

ARHIPELAG Bulevar Zorana Đinđića 161/23SRB-11070 Novi BeogradSerbiaP:+ 381 11 33 44 536F:+ 381 63 164 36 09E: [email protected] www.arhipelag.rs

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