Imre Kertész

Imre Kertesz's novel is a tale of identity and memory - the story of a middle-aged man taking stock of his life in the everpresent shadow of the Holocaust. The story unfolds at a retreat as the narrator, a middle-aged survivor of the Holocaust, tries to explain to a friend that he cannot bring a child into a world where the Holocaust has occurred and could occur again. In an intricate narrative, we learn of the narrator's myriad disappointments: his unsuccessful literary career, his failed marriage, his ex-wife's new family and children - children that could have been his own. Kaddish for a Child Not Born is a deeply introspective, poetic yet unsentimental work in which a man takes stock of his own life choices and those that have been made for him by events beyond his control.

Fateless or Fatelessness (Hungarian: Sorstalanság, lit. 'Fatelessness') is a novel by Imre Kertész, winner of the 2002 Nobel Prize for literature, written between 1960 and 1973 and first published in 1975. The novel is a semi-autobiographical story about a 14-year-old Hungarian Jew's experiences in the Auschwitz and Buchenwald concentration camps. The book is the first part of a trilogy, which continues in A kudarc ("Fiasco" ISBN 0-8101-1161-6) and Kaddis a meg nem született gyermekért ("Kaddish for an Unborn Child" ISBN 1-4000-7862-8). Kertész won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2002, "for writing that upholds the fragile experience of the individual against the barbaric arbitrariness of history". (Source: [Wikipedia](

Roman philosophique. Nouvelles

This book came about through a conversation the author had with his friend Zoltán Hafner over the course of 2003 and 2004.

The first word in this novel by the winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature is “No.” It is how the novel’s narrator, a middle-aged Hungarian-Jewish writer, answers an acquaintance who asks him if he has a child. It is the answer he gave his wife (now ex-wife) years earlier when she told him that she wanted one. The loss, longing and regret that haunt the years between those two “no”s give rise to one of the most eloquent meditations ever written on the Holocaust

Ten years have passed since the fall of Communism. B.–a writer of high literary reputation whose birth and survival in Auschwitz defied all probability–has taken his own life. Among his papers, his friend Kingbitter discovers a play titled Liquidation in which he reads an eerie foretelling of the personal and political crises that he and B.’s other friends now face: having survived the Holocaust and the years of Communist rule, having experienced the surge of hopefulness that rose from the rubble of the Wall, they are left with little but a sense of chaos and an utter loss of identity.

Kaddisj voor een niet geboren kind. - Monoloog van een oude joodse man die vanwege zijn ervaringen in Auschwitz geen kinderen wilde hebben.

Un renversement politique, quelque part en Amérique latine. La dictature qui s’établit offre au simple policier Antonio Martens l’occasion inespérée d’intégrer l’armée. Il y rencontre Diaz, son supérieur aussi charismatique que louche, et l’acolyte de celui-ci, le sadique Rodriguez. Commencent alors des filatures au cours desquelles sont fichés un grand nombre de citoyens irréprochables.Peu après, Rodriguez installe dans leur bureau un instrument de torture et s’apprête à en faire usage. Martens fait face à ses propres sentiments – trop faibles pour une véritable remise en cause, trop forts pour l’insouciance pure et simple. Jusqu’où fermera-t-il les yeux ?Ce Roman policier à grande puissance évocatrice met en scène les ravages d’une terreur emblématique. A travers l’écriture, le bourreau Martens cherche la rédemption, à l’instar des victimes dans d’autres œuvres de Kertész. [Actes Sud]

At the age of 14 Georg Koves is plucked from his home in a Jewish section of Budapest and without any particular malice, placed on a train to Auschwitz. He does not understand the reason for his fate. He doesn't particularly think of himself as Jewish. And his fellow prisoners, who decry his lack of Yiddish, keep telling him, "You are no Jew." In the lowest circle of the Holocaust, Georg remains an outsider. The genius of Imre Kertesz's unblinking novel lies in its refusal to mitigate the strangeness of its events, not least of which is Georg's dogmatic insistence on making sense of what he witnesses'or pretending that what he witnesses makes sense. Haunting, evocative, and all the more horrifying for its rigorous avoidance of sentiment, Fatelessness is a masterpiece in the traditions of Primo Levi, Elie Wiesel, and Tadeusz Borowski. From the Trade Paperback edition.

"Imre Kertész, superviviente de Auschwitz que vivió el stalinismo y el kadarismo en Hungría, reflexiona--en un viaje existencial a través de varias ciudades europeas--acerca de las transformaciones que necesariamente afectan a las fibras más profundas del individuo."--P. of cover.

Ben shu shi zuo zhe yu 2001 nian gen ju zi ji chuang zuo yu er shi duo nian qian de chu nu˜ zuo -- chang pian tong ming zi chuan ti xiao shuo gai bian de. gu shi yi er zhan mo qi wei bei jing, jiang shu le yi ge ming jiao jiu mi ji, ke wei shen de xiong ya li you tai shao nian zai yi ci shang ban tu zhong bei " xi ju xing di " zhua zou, bing cong bu da pei si zhuan dao le de guo jing nei de " na cui ji zhong ying " . zai ji zhong ying li, ke wei shen shi zhong yi hai zi de dan chun zhi xin, yong ren xing de yan guang shen shi zhe na ge ren xing kui fa de shi jie.

Ein Mann um die Fünfzig muß mit dem Fiasko fertig werden, daß sein Erstlingswerk der "Roman eines Schicksalslosen" vom Verlag abgelehnt wird. Allein in seiner winzigen Wohnung und Arbeitszelle mitten in Budapest fühlt er sich als Gefangener eines Haufens Papier, den er selbst produziert hat. Bis ihm schließlich der Weg hinaus glückt: er erfindet sich einen Helden, dem er die Bürde seiner eigenen Erfahrungen auflädt, und verdammt ihn zur Wiederholung.