An exemplary collection of work from one of the world's leading scholars of intellectual history "Foeldenyi . . . stage[s] a broad metaphysical melodrama between opposites that he pursues throughout this fierce, provoking collection (expertly translated by Ottilie Mulzet). . . . He proves himself a brilliant interpreter of the dark underside of Enlightenment ambition."-James Wood, New Yorker Laszlo Foeldenyi's work, in the long tradition of public intellectual and cultural criticism, resonates with the writings of Montaigne, Walter Benjamin, and Thomas Mann. In this new essay collection, Foeldenyi considers the continuing fallout from the collapse of religion, exploring how Enlightenment traditions have not replaced basic elements of previously held religious mythologies-neither their metaphysical completeness nor their comforting purpose. Realizing beautiful writing through empathy, imagination, fascination, and a fierce sense of justice, Foeldenyi covers a wide range of topics including a meditation on the metaphysical unity of a sculpture group and an analysis of fear as a window into our relationship with time.

The Book of Mordechai and Lazarus are the first and the second novels by Hungarian writer Gabor Schein. Published together in one volume, they comprise the first in Seagull Books's new Hungarian List series. Both novels trace the legacy of the Holocaust in Hungary. The Book of Mordechai tells the story of three generations in a Hungarian Jewish family, interwoven with the biblical narrative of Esther. Lazarus relates the relationship between a son, growing up in the in the final decades of late-communist Hungary, and his father, who survived the depredations of Hungarian fascists during the Second World War. Mordechai is an act of recovery an attempt to seize a coherent story from a historical maelstrom. By contrast, Lazarus, like Kafka's unsent letter to his own father, is an act of defiance. Against his father's wish to never be the subject of his son's writing, the narrator goes on to place his father at the center of his story. Together, both novels speak to a contemporary Hungarian society which remains all too silent towards the crimes of the past.

An inventive collection of stories by one of the most prominent and acclaimed writers in Hungary today. The Birth of Emma K., a collection of twelve short stories rich with magic, introduces English-language readers to one of the most vibrant and original voices in contemporary Hungarian literature. Zsolt Lang's new collection opens with God sitting on a bench looking over Budapest; later, a Hungarian man who has stumbled into a Romanian music theory class suddenly finds he is able to speak expertly about Hungarian composer Bela Bartok-and in perfect Romanian; and even later, against all odds, the embryo of Emma fights for her future life from within the womb. Drifting between melancholic and witty, in sentences that are winding, subtle, and colloquial, Lang's stories are deeply rooted in Transylvanian culture and history. Reminiscent of the best writings of Irish modernist masters such as Samuel Beckett and Flann O'Brien, The Birth of Emma K. presents an unforgettable collage of human nature.

An award-winning translator presents selections from the haunting final volumes of a leading voice in contemporary Hungarian poetry Szilard Borbely, one of the most celebrated writers to emerge from post-Communist Hungary, received numerous literary awards in his native country. In this volume, acclaimed translator Ottilie Mulzet reveals the full range and force of Borbely's verse by bringing together generous selections from his last two books, Final Matters and To the Body. The original Hungarian text is set on pages facing the English translations, and the book also features an afterword by Mulzet that places the poems in literary, historical, and biographical context. Restless, curious, learned, and alert, Borbely weaves into his work an unlikely mix of Hungarian folk songs, Christian and Jewish hymns, classical myths, police reports, and unsettling accounts of abortions. In her afterword, Mulzet calls this collection "a blasphemous and fragmentary prayer book ... that challenges us to rethink the boundaries of victimhood, culpability, and our own religious and cultural definitions."

An unflinching narrative of family history in Hungary's Jewish community and the nation's deep complicity in the Holocaust "Gabor Schein is that rarest of elegists, endowed equally with a respect for history and an ecstasy of imagination."-Joshua Cohen, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Netanyahus Born in 1723 in a small German town, Johann Klarfeld is thirteen when his father dies. He is taken in by a kind Italian painter to live with him and his daughter in The Hague. But the daughter, beautiful and blind, has a secret. Two centuries later, Berta Josza is born during World War II in a village in northern Hungary. The daughter of a police officer, Berta watches chaos unfold through her father's eyes, from the plundering of the possessions of murdered Jews to the carnage of the 1956 Revolution. When she happens upon an enigmatic autobiography in a secondhand bookshop, she can't shake the sense that she somehow knows the author. Lyrical and haunting, this is an unforgettable story about the spirit of history and the individual fates that make up the whole-the entwinements of the past and their unshakable hold on the present.

A posthumously published Hungarian masterpiece that reflects on fragmented lives.   Born in 1963, Szilárd Borbély emerged as one of the most important poets of post-communist Europe, exploring the themes of grief, memory, and trauma in his critically acclaimed work. Following the murder of his mother during a burglary in 2000, and the subsequent breakdown and death of his father, Borbély suffered from post-traumatic depression and tragically ended his own life in 2014. Among the manuscripts that Borbély left behind was Kafka’s Son, a fragmentary work, rendered still more fragmented through the author’s death. Through a series of haunting passages that explore early twentieth-century Prague, including the ruins of the ancient Jewish ghetto during the time of its demolition, Borbély inscribes the story of Franz Kafka and his father onto the city. We are used to hearing from Franz; here Hermann Kafka is also given a voice. “The son,� he tells us, “is the life of the father. The father is the death of the son.� By extension, then, this book is also an indirect telling of the story of Borbély and his father, and about sons and fathers in the Habsburg empire and the culture of brutality that defined Eastern Europe. A posthumously published Hungarian masterpiece, Kafka’s Son now appears in English in award-winning translator Ottilie Mulzet’s sensitive translation, a fragmentary yet iridescent work inviting us to reflect on our fragmented lives.

An award-winning translator presents selections from the haunting final volumes of a leading voice in contemporary Hungarian poetry Szilard Borbely, one of the most celebrated writers to emerge from post-Communist Hungary, received numerous literary awards in his native country. In this volume, acclaimed translator Ottilie Mulzet reveals the full range and force of Borbely's verse by bringing together generous selections from his last two books, Final Matters and To the Body. The original Hungarian text is set on pages facing the English translations, and the book also features an afterword by Mulzet that places the poems in literary, historical, and biographical context. Restless, curious, learned, and alert, Borbely weaves into his work an unlikely mix of Hungarian folk songs, Christian and Jewish hymns, classical myths, police reports, and unsettling accounts of abortions. In her afterword, Mulzet calls this collection "a blasphemous and fragmentary prayer book ... that challenges us to rethink the boundaries of victimhood, culpability, and our own religious and cultural definitions."