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As the sun set on June 8, 1969, a group of teenagers gathered near
a massive tree in a main square of Budapest to mourn the untimely
death of Rolling Stones guitarist Brian Jones. By the end of the
evening, sirens blared, teens were interrogated, and the myth of
the most notorious juvenile gang in Budapest was born. The origin
of the Great Tree Gang became an elaborately cultivated morality
tale of the dangers posed by allegedly rebellious youths to the
conformity of communist communities. In time, governments across
Cold War Europe manufactured similar stories about the threats
posed by groups of unruly adolescents. In Children of Communism,
Sandor Horvath explores this youth counterculture in the Eastern
Bloc, how young people there imagined the West, and why this
generation proved so crucial to communist identity politics. He not
only reveals how communism shaped youth culture, but also how young
people shaped official policy. A fascinating read on the power of
youth protest, Children of Communism shows what life was like for
the first generation to have been born under communism and how one
evening spent grieving rock and roll under a tree forever changed
lives.
To create the poems in this collection, Nobel Prize-winner Herta
Muller cut up countless newspapers and magazines in search of
striking phrases, words, or even fragments of words, which she then
arranged in a the form of a collage. Father's on the Phone with the
Flies presents seventy-three of Muller's collage poems for the
first time in English translation, alongside full-color
reproductions of the originals. Muller takes full advantage of the
collage form, generating poems rich in wordplay, ambiguity, and
startling, surreal metaphors the disruption and dislocation at
their core rendered visible through stark contrasts in color, font,
and type size. Liberating words from conformity and coercion,
Muller renders them fresh and invests them forcefully with personal
experience. Sure to thrill any fan of contemporary literature,
Father's on the Phone with the Flies is an unexpected, exciting
work from one of the most protean writers ever to win the Nobel.
As the sun set on June 8, 1969, a group of teenagers gathered near
a massive tree in a main square of Budapest to mourn the untimely
death of Rolling Stones guitarist Brian Jones. By the end of the
evening, sirens blared, teens were interrogated, and the myth of
the most notorious juvenile gang in Budapest was born. The origin
of the Great Tree Gang became an elaborately cultivated morality
tale of the dangers posed by allegedly rebellious youths to the
conformity of communist communities. In time, governments across
Cold War Europe manufactured similar stories about the threats
posed by groups of unruly adolescents. In Children of Communism,
Sandor Horvath explores this youth counterculture in the Eastern
Bloc, how young people there imagined the West, and why this
generation proved so crucial to communist identity politics. He not
only reveals how communism shaped youth culture, but also how young
people shaped official policy. A fascinating read on the power of
youth protest, Children of Communism shows what life was like for
the first generation to have been born under communism and how one
evening spent grieving rock and roll under a tree forever changed
lives.
The Hungarian city of Sztalinvaros, or "Stalin-City," was intended
to be the paradigmatic urban community of the new communist society
in the 1950s. In Stalinism Reloaded, Sandor Horvath explores how
Stalin-City and the socialist regime were built and stabilized not
only by the state but also by the people who came there with hope
for a better future. By focusing on the everyday experiences of
citizens, Horvath considers the contradictions in the Stalinist
policies and the strategies these bricklayers, bureaucrats, shop
girls, and even children put in place in order to cope with and
shape the expectations of the state. Stalinism Reloaded reveals how
the state influenced marriage patterns, family structure, and
gender relations. While the devastating effects of this regime are
considered, a convincing case is made that ordinary citizens had
significant agency in shaping the political policies that governed
them.
The Hungarian city of Sztalinvaros, or "Stalin-City," was intended
to be the paradigmatic urban community of the new communist society
in the 1950s. In Stalinism Reloaded, Sandor Horvath explores how
Stalin-City and the socialist regime were built and stabilized not
only by the state but also by the people who came there with hope
for a better future. By focusing on the everyday experiences of
citizens, Horvath considers the contradictions in the Stalinist
policies and the strategies these bricklayers, bureaucrats, shop
girls, and even children put in place in order to cope with and
shape the expectations of the state. Stalinism Reloaded reveals how
the state influenced marriage patterns, family structure, and
gender relations. While the devastating effects of this regime are
considered, a convincing case is made that ordinary citizens had
significant agency in shaping the political policies that governed
them.
An unexpected, exciting work from one of the most protean writers
ever to win the Nobel Prize. To create the poems in this
collection, Herta Müller cut up countless newspapers and
magazines in search of striking phrases, words, or even fragments
of words, which she then arranged in the form of a collage.
Father’s on the Phone with the Flies presents seventy-three of
Müller’s collage poems for the first time in English
translation, alongside full-color reproductions of the originals.
Müller takes full advantage of the collage form, generating poems
rich in wordplay, ambiguity, and startling, surreal metaphors—the
disruption and dislocation at their core rendered visible through
stark contrasts in color, font, and type size. Liberating words
from conformity and coercion, Müller renders them fresh and
invests them forcefully with personal experience.
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.
Plays include: Tongue, Tied (1m, 1f) A man and a woman fall in love
through their hand puppets. Death and Javier Miguel Lopez
Guadalajara Asante (3m) A coffee stand vendor tricks Death into
giving him his job. Clowns(s) (4m, 1f) A children's clown, possibly
on the run from the law, bemoans his fate and falls in love with a
mother of one of his clients. She convinces him that he might be
happier if he becomes a normal person and just does clowning on the
sly. Skirmishes (3m, 3f) A man and woman argue at a picnic while
ants wage battle and romance around them. The Plaid Man (2m, 2f)
Death and Cupid fall in love, using two Elizabethan people as their
mouthpieces. North Pole Winter Woes (3m) An elf with poor sight
threatens to beat Santa up in a bar for having sex with his little
elf wife. The Abduction (1m, 1f) A couple plays drinking games in a
field, waiting to be picked up by aliens (which they are). Natural
Selection (3f) Three soccer moms display their different approaches
to mothering with the manner in which they encourage their children
(two of whom are ruthless, the last of which is training her son to
be a saint and actually turns out to be the most ruthless of all).
After World War II, a new community of elite emerged in Hungary, in
spite of the communist principles espoused by the government. In
Luxury and the Ruling Elite in Socialist Hungary, György Majtényi
allows us a peek inside their affluence. Majtényi exposes the
lavish standard of living that the higher echelon enjoyed, complete
with pools, Persian rugs, extravagant furniture, servants, and
groundskeepers. They shopped in private stores stocked with
expensive meats and tropical fruits just for them. They benefited
from access to everything from books, telephone lines, and
international travel to hunting grounds, soccer games, and even the
choicest cemetery plots. But Majtényi also reveals the underbelly
of such society, particularly how these privileges were used as a
way of maintaining power, initiating or denying entry to party
members, and strengthening the very hierarchies that communism
promised to abolish. Taking readers on a fascinating and often
surprising look inside the manor homes and vacation villas of
wealthy post–World War II Hungarians, Majtényi offers fresh
insight into the realities of patriarchy, loyalty, gender, and
class within the communist regime.
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