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Hungarian Imre Kertesz was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in
2002 for "writing that upholds the fragile experience of the
individual against the barbaric arbitrariness of history." His
conversation with literary historian Thomas Cooper that is
presented here speaks specifically to this relationship between the
personal and the historical. In The Holocaust as Culture, Kertesz
recalls his childhood in Buchenwald and Auschwitz and as a writer
living under the so-called soft dictatorship of communist Hungary.
Reflecting on his experiences of the Holocaust and the Soviet
occupation of Hungary following World War II, Kertesz likens the
ideological machinery of National Socialism to the oppressive
routines of life under communism. He also discusses the complex
publication history of Fateless, his acclaimed novel about the
experiences of a Hungarian child deported to Auschwitz, and the
lack of interest with which it was initially met in Hungary due to
its failure to conform to the communist government's simplistic
history of the relationship between Nazi occupiers and communist
liberators. The underlying theme in the dialogue between Kertesz
and Cooper is the difficulty of mediating the past and creating
models for interpreting history, and how this challenges ideas of
self. The title The Holocaust as Culture is taken from that of a
talk Kertesz gave in Vienna for a symposium on the life and works
of Jean Amery. That essay is included here, and it reflects on
Amery's fear that history would all too quickly forget the fates of
the victims of the concentration camps. Combined with an
introduction by Thomas Cooper, the thoughts gathered here reveal
Kertesz's views on the lengthening shadow of the Holocaust as an
ever-present part of the world's cultural memory and his idea of
the crucial functions of literature and art as the vessels of this
memory.
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Fateless (Paperback)
Imre Kertesz
1
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R311
R253
Discovery Miles 2 530
Save R58 (19%)
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Ships in 9 - 15 working days
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'While the average reader cannot pretend truly to understand the
reality of those who suffered in concentration camps, Kertesz draws
us one step closer' Observer Gyuri, a fourteen-year-old Hungarian
Jew, gets the day off school to witness his father signing over the
family timber business - his final act before being sent to a
labour camp. Two months later, Gyuri finds himself assigned to a
'permanent workplace'. This is the start of his journey to
Auschwitz. On his arrival Gyuri finds that he is unable to identify
with other Jews, and is rejected by them. An outsider among his own
people, his estrangement makes him a preternaturally acute
observer, dogmatically insisting on making sense of the barbarity -
and beauty - he witnesses.
'A fine and powerful piece of work... Dark, at times cryptic, and
hugely energetic' Irish Times "No!" is the first word of this
haunting novel. It is how a middle-aged Hungarian-Jewish writer
answers an acquaintance who asks him if he has a child, and it is
how he answered his wife years earlier when she told him that she
wanted one. The loss, longing and regret that haunt the years
between these two 'No!'s give rise to one of the most eloquent
meditations ever written on the Holocaust. As Kertesz's narrator
addresses the child he couldn't bear to bring into the world, he
takes readers on a mesmerising, lyrical journey through his life,
from his childhood to Auschwitz to his failed marriage.
'Liquidation, suspenseful and bleakly comic, reads like a treatise
on the mystery of the end of life and the mystery of suicide... A
compelling if deeply unsettling work' Independent Kingbitter, an
editor at a failing publishing house, believes himself to have been
the closest friend of B., a celebrated writer and Auschwitz
survivor, who recently committed suicide. Amongst the papers B. has
left him, Kingbitter finds a play entitled Liquidation that
uncannily predicts the behaviour of B.'s ex-wife, his mistress and
Kingbitter himself. As he obsessively reads and rereads the play,
Kingbitter becomes transfixed with the idea that buried within
these papers is B.'s great novel: the book that will explain his
relationship with Auschwitz.
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Detective Story (Paperback)
Imre Kertesz; Translated by Tim Wilkinson
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R430
R376
Discovery Miles 3 760
Save R54 (13%)
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Ships in 10 - 15 working days
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From Nobel Laureate Imre Kertesz comes this riveting novel about a
torturer for the secret police of a Latin American regime who tells
the haunting story of the father and son he ensnared and destroyed.
Now in prison, Antonio Martens is a torturer for a recently defunct
dictatorship. He requests and is given writing materials in his
cell, using them to narrate his involvement in the torture and
assassination of a wealthy and prominent man and his son whose
principled but passive opposition to the regime left them
vulnerable to the secret police. Inside Martens's mind, we inhabit
the rationalizing world of evil and see firsthand the inherent
danger of inertia during times of crisis. A slim, explosive novel
of justice railroaded by malevolence, Detective Story is a warning
cry for our time.
Imre Kert?sz's savagely lyrical and suspenseful new novel traces
the continuing echoes the Holocaust and communism in the
consciousness of contemporary Eastern Europe.
Ten years after the fall of communism, a writer named B. commits
suicide, devastating his circle and deeply puzzling his friend
Kingsbitter. For among B.'s effects, Kingsbitter finds a play that
eerily predicts events after his death. Why did B.-who was born at
Auschwitz and miraculously survived-take his life? As Kingsbitter
searches for the answer -and for the novel he is convinced lies
hidden among his friend's papers-"Liquidation" becomes an inquest
into the deeply compromised inner life of a generation. The result
is moving, revelatory and haunting.
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.
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Fiasko (Paperback)
Imre Kertesz
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R340
R322
Discovery Miles 3 220
Save R18 (5%)
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Ships in 12 - 17 working days
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Detective Story (Paperback)
Imre Kertesz; Translated by Tim Wilkinson
1
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R272
R219
Discovery Miles 2 190
Save R53 (19%)
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Ships in 9 - 15 working days
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'A sophisticated and brilliant dissection of nihilistic power'
Times Literary Supplement From his prison cell, Antonio Martens, an
interrogator for the recently fallen dictatorship, awaits
execution. His charge? Multiple counts of murder; the murder of
those disappeared by the state. Bereft of authority, and unable to
avoid the consequences of his actions any longer, Martens turns his
story to his involvement in the assassination of the high-profile
Salinas family, and with it peers into the murderous mechanics of a
regime bent on achieving its ends - no matter the means.
A falta de algo mejor, he hojeado mis diarios. Mi vida es una
novela peculiar. Hay una indudable coherencia. Por otra parte, si
bien estos apuntes revelan una forma de vida bastante digna de
atencin en medio del derrumbamiento centroeuropeo, precisamente las
circunstancias centroeuropeas lo inutilizan totalmente como
documento de una forma de vida merecedora de atencin: resultan
intiles porque no sirven de consuelo para seguir viviendo.
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