Novel
The Story of My Wife
A feleségem története
Milán Füst · 1942
Synopsis
Jakob Störr, a Dutch merchant sea captain, tells the story of his marriage himself. On a bet proposed by a friend, he has married a young Frenchwoman, Lizzy, whom he loves without measure and whom he very soon suspects of deceiving him. He watches her, questions her, thinks he has proof and then loses it, blames himself, starts again, from one port to another and as far as Paris. Nothing he reports allows a verdict, and it is the narrator himself who gradually becomes the question.
Context
The novel appeared in Budapest in 1942, from Hungária, with the subtitle “The Notebooks of Captain Störr”, and was reissued in 1946. It became known outside Hungary through the French translation published by Gallimard in 1958, with a preface by Albert Gyergyai. It has long been repeated that it earned its author a Nobel nomination in 1965: Swedish radio asked about him that year among the favourites, but the nomination is not attested. In 2021, Ildikó Enyedi made a film from it, presented in competition at Cannes.
Who it is for
A long novel carried by a single voice, that of a man who contradicts himself without knowing it; translated into French and English.
Prizes and reception
The book through which its author is read outside Hungary, and his most considerable work in prose.