#hungarianlit

In Focus
Excursion by Fruzsina Mesterházy

As a group of excursionists clamber on, a rock becomes a giant, a little girl appears, invisibly, and the group, now separated, get lost in time.

Fiction
Nocturnal Predators by Tamás Kötter

A group of people in a therapy session explore the more sumptuous sides of their hidden desires and touch on the intertwining of trauma and desire.

In Focus
Yesterday’s Biker by Balázs Szálinger

This beautiful, despairing poem about a biker is a love letter to someone we never missed and an obituary to a stranger we never knew.

Fiction
Hedonistic Meditation on Youth by Árpád Kun

A man who fled his youth, and fled authoritarian Hungary reflects on the path, the women, and the romance that led him to maturity.

Poetry
Christiana Democracy by Balázs Szálinger

Weary and worn, Christiana Democracy considers her name, its history, and questions whether in this world a person can still believe.

Fiction
Ophelia by Dorka Graf

Closed wards, inertia, and the summer the rivers broke their banks—a meeting between two young people in a cheap bar unearths buried emotion.

Fiction
Rug in the Trunk by László Márton

A mystery by László Márton involving a Hungarian chemical engineer and a Persian rug, set in Vienna, just six years after the Soviets withdrew.

Poetry
“it was iron: i thought by János Marno

A fragmentary avantgarde poem by Hungarian poet János Marno, with seemingly no framework, contorted with cynicism, lust, shame, villainy, and terror.

Poetry
Epidemic by Petra Szőcs

The inhabitants of this plague-struck world, in this poem by Hungarian poet Petra Szőcs, are seething with suspicion, horror, fear, and longing.