Novel
Metropole
Epepe
Ferenc Karinthy · 1970
Synopsis
Budaï, a Hungarian linguist, takes a plane to a conference in Helsinki. He steps off into an immense, teeming city with no name, whose language and script resemble nothing he knows, and where no one understands any of the languages he speaks. He looks for the airport, an embassy, someone to talk to, and wears himself out trying to decipher what surrounds him; the only person with whom he forms a semblance of a bond is the blonde lift attendant at his hotel.
Context
The book appeared in 1970. Its author, a doctor of linguistics, denies his character all the footholds that this knowledge gives. It has been read as an allegory of powerlessness before the incomprehensible and of confinement, and as a Kafkaesque fable about the impossibility of communicating. The French translation by Judith and Pierre Karinthy appeared in 1996, then was reissued in 2013 by Zulma with an introduction by Emmanuel Carrère; the English translation, published in 2008, is titled Metropole.
Who it is for
A novel in which one marks time with the character, and that is the very device; translated into French and English.
Prizes and reception
The book by which its author is read outside Hungary, successfully reissued in France in 2013.
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