First published in 2005. The Bethlen family was an ancient noble house of considerable wealth and influence in Transylvania. The writer of this autobiography Count Miklos (born 1642) was a General in 1682, Privy Councillor in 1689, Foispan in 1690 and Chancellor in 1691, after an excellent education and distinguished career in public life. He then clashed with General Rabutin, from 1696 the Austrian Commander in chief in Transylvania, which led to his arrest and imprisonment on a charge of treason in 1703. His autobiography, one of the most extensive of the literary memoirs that came from Transylvania at the period (among them the Letters from Turkey of Kelemen Mikes and Metamorphosis Transylvaniae of Peter Apor, both published by Kegan Paul in Bernard Adam's English translation), was written in prison and under sentence of death in Hungary and Austria. Transferred to Viennese confinement in 1708 and pardoned by Emperor Charles III in 1712, Bethlen was never allowed to return to Transylvania, spent his last years in relative freedom in Vienna, and died in 1716.

Crazy, funny and gorgeously dark, Kornel Esti sets into rollicking action a series of adventures about a man and his wicked doppleganger, who breathes every forbidden idea of his childhood into his ear, and then reappears decades later. Part Gogol, part Chekhov, and all brilliance, Kosztolanyi in his final book serves up his most magical, radical, and intoxicating work. Here is a novel which inquires: What if your id (loyally keeping your name) decides to strike out on its own, cuts a disreputable swath through the world, and then sends home to you all its unpaid bills and ruined maidens? And then: What if you and your alter ego decide to write a book together?"

Fierce Love is a compelling and candid biography of Cork-born theatre pioneer (1918-2006) Mary O’Malley, founder-director of Belfast’s Lyric Players Theatre from 1951 to 1981. Neé Hickey, Mary went to Loreto Secondary School in Navan, Co. Meath, writing and directing her first play, The Lost Princess, before living with her mother in Dublin. There she became a key member of the New Theatre Group, immersed in the city’s social and cultural life and joining the Irish Society for Intellectual Freedom. On 14 September 1947 Mary married Armagh-born psychiatrist Pearse O’Malley, later moving to Belfast’s Derryvolgie Avenue off the Malone Road. There she formed a fifty-seat studio theatre above the stables and created Belfast Lyric Players Theatre, a company of actors and artists who were to put on 140 plays over seventeen years on a stage only ten-foot wide, asserting a broad Irish and European culture. W.B Yeats, twenty-six of whose plays were performed, was her standard-bearer. In 1952 she was elected to Belfast Corporation as an Irish Labour Party councillor, and in 1957 she founded the literary magazine Threshold, which enjoyed a thirty-year lifespan. Her other activities included running a drama school, an art gallery and music academy, while raising a family of three. As she battled conservatism, a socialist and nationalist in a Unionist city, this courageous and tenacious woman transformed Belfast with her playhouse — Liam Neeson and Ciarán Hinds were among her protégées — expanding her repertoire and bridging the political quagmire of the sixties to build a permanent 300-seater Lyric Players theatre, which opened with Yeats’s Cuchulain Cycle in October 1968. Her fierce will survived the Troubles, ensuring that her broad-based community theatre never had to close its doors. Her vision was posthumously crowned by the 2011 Lyric Theatre building overlooking the Lagan. Fierce Love celebrates these achievements, chronicling a resourceful and controversial individual, who swam against the tide of populism and sectarianism to establish an independent academy for actors and artists in a tireless quest for imaginative freedom and excellence. Mary O’Malley’s life was complex, and her legacy enduring.

Set in the 1970s and '80s, The Hangman's House narrates the life and times of a Hungarian family in Romania. Those were extraordinary times of oppression, poverty and hopelessness, and Andrea Tompa's latest novel depicts everyday life under the brutal communist dictatorship of Nicolae Ceausescu, referred to by the narrator as an unnamed "one-eared hangman." Ceausescu is omnipresent throughout the story-in portraits in classrooms and schoolbooks, in the empty food stores, in TV programs, in obligatory Party demonstrations. Most insidiously, he is present in the dreams and nightmares of common people, who, in this cruel period of history, become cruel to one another, just like the dictator. Our narrator, a teenage "Girl," observes life through tangled, almost interminable sentences, trying to understand and process the many questions in her life: why her family is falling apart; why her mother has three jobs; why her father becomes an alcoholic; why her grandmother dreams of "Hungarian times"; and, most troubling, why there is persecution all around. Brutal though the times are, Girl's narration is far from a mere indictment. It is suffused with love, tenderness and irony. Written by a woman and featuring a young woman narrator, The Hangman's House focuses intently on how women play the principal roles in holding together the resilient fabric of society. Evocative of the celebrated wry humor that distinguishes the best of Hungarian literature, Tompa's novel is a tour de force that will introduce a brilliant writer to English-language readers.

This is the first biography of Denis Johnston, barrister, theatre director, film-maker, pioneering television producer, war correspondent, essayist and celebrated playwright. Johnston was of Ulster Presbyterian stock, born into Edwardian Dublin, where he was briefly held hostage in his family home at Lansdowne Road during the 1916 Rising. Son of a Supreme Court judge, he was schooled at St Andrew's in Dublin, in Edinburgh and Christ's College, Cambridge, and at Harvard University. He made the name of the Gate Theatre in 1929 with his astonishing first play The Old Lady Says 'No!', created the radio epic 'Lillibulero' for the BBC in Belfast, and earned an OBE for his war reporting from North Africa, Yugoslavia and Buchenwald. In 1950 he decamped to New York and taught for many years at colleges in Massachusetts, founding the Poets' Theatre in Boston. An Irishman of wide horizons and wit, and a prodigal dissenter, his multi-faceted life illuminates the cultural history of the past century. He was turbulently married to the actresses Shelah Richards and Betty Chancellor, and had four children, among them the novelist Jennifer Johnston. In this masterly biography, Adams draws upon Johnston's copious and intimate diaries, letters and uncompleted autobiography deposited in Trinity College, Dublin, cataloguing the 'untidy museum' of his subject's past. The result is an enthralling narrative of the extraordinary secret life of a complex, self-doubting individual, which brings new light to bear on one of the twentieth century's most original Irish writers.

Hungarian TV producer/presenter, documentary filmmaker and author Andras Kepes' first novel The Inflatable Buddha - originally published as Tovispuszta in 2011 in Hungary, where it has become a bestseller - has been translated from the Hungarian by Bernard Adams. The Inflatable Buddha is a warm, witty and poignant account of the lives of three boys from disparate cultural backgrounds, set against the dramatic backdrop of Hungary's recent history. Pal, Isti and David are closely connected, through shared roots in Tovispuszta, a fictitious settlement, and in the everyday joys and struggles of their respective families, relationships and careers. Andras Kepes' narrative is at once realistic, intimate and universally appealing. It also offers an insightful overview of events in Hungary as they unfurl, as seen through the protagonists' eyes - in a single lifetime, the country's political and cultural landscape undergoes more challenges and changes to allegiance, geographical borders, beliefs and regimes than most other nations experience in their entire history. Some quotes about the novel in its original language: 'This highly readable book traces the history of three Hungarian families over the last hundred years, and through their fate we learn of the tumultuous and fascinating history of fascist and communist totalitarianism in Hungary. Kepes' prose is sharp, clear and entertaining and he writes with deep human understanding and great humor. The book certainly deserves to be a bestseller in English as it has been in Hungarian; it delivers a powerful and deeply engaging message about how ordinary people cope with extraordinary historical circumstances. Kepes' book is a riveting page-turner, and as a multi-generational family saga it belongs in the finest traditions of this illustrious genre.' Joseph P. Forgas, April 2013 "Andras Kepes has created a rich and moving epic of his homeland in the 20th century. Known for his humor, incisive questioning, and insightful reportage, he has long been hailed as the most popular televison journalist and talk show host in Budapest. Drawing on his extensive knowledge of some of the most varied and extraordinary characters in a nation of dramatic contradictions, he has finally written an historical novel that is both personal and epic. Beginning with the friendship of three boys--an aristocrat, a peasant, and a Jew--he spins a spellbinding tale of the Hungarian experience through their children and grandchildren as they live through feudalism, fascism, war, Communism, revolution, emigration. Funny, intimate, tragic, it is a saga of realism and magic, in which a nation's heart-breaking history comes through with bittersweet poignancy. Kepes is a wondrous storyteller, marvellous in revealing the variety and depth of the soul. A fine novel, a breathtaking adventure." Steven Kovacs, March 2013 "My mom bought this book for me for Christmas. She bought it in October or November but she read so many good reviews of it that she decided to read it before giving it to me. And then she gave it to my granddad. And then a family friend. And then my sister. And so on ... So I got a 'recycled' book for Christmas, but who cares This book is so good, I just don't know what to say It made me laugh, it made me cry. It made me remember all the stories I'd heard from my grandparents about what it was like during the war and Communism. And I recalled the little I remember of the last 10 years of Communism. I hope that an English translation is on the way so even more people can read it Weirdly enough, I'd just started deciphering and transcribing my great granddad's diary (which covers most of the period Kepes writes about), and Kepes mentions people my great granddad knew as well Freak out " Marianna Pap's review on Goodreads 7 February 2012 - 5* - Hungarian Authors

This scarce antiquarian book is a selection from Kessinger Publishing's Legacy Reprint Series. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment to protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature. Kessinger Publishing is the place to find hundreds of thousands of rare and hard-to-find books with something of interest for everyone

This scarce antiquarian book is a selection from Kessinger Publishing's Legacy Reprint Series. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment to protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature. Kessinger Publishing is the place to find hundreds of thousands of rare and hard-to-find books with something of interest for everyone