Novel
Fatelessness
Sorstalanság
Imre Kertész · 1975
Synopsis
Budapest, 1944. Köves Gyuri, fourteen, sees his father leave for labour service; he stays with his stepmother and works in an arms factory in Csepel. One day, a policeman makes him get off the bus with other boys; they are taken to a brickworks, then in a wagon to Auschwitz, and from there to Buchenwald. He describes each stage as a reasonable thing: the queue, the selection, the hierarchy, the ration, illness. He does not understand what is happening to him and is never indignant about it.
Context
Begun in 1960 and completed in 1973, the novel was rejected that year by the publisher Magvető; it appeared in 1975 from Szépirodalmi and received a favourable critical reception, without entering the canon. An article by György Spiró in 1983 led to its rediscovery, and a new edition followed in 1985. The book first found its readership abroad, in Germany from 1990; in Hungary, it established itself only after the change of regime and above all after the Nobel. Kertész himself wrote the screenplay for the 2005 film based on the novel.
Who it is for
A first-person novel of constant neutrality; it is this that makes the text difficult. Translated into French and English.
Prizes and reception
The major book of the first Hungarian writer to win the Nobel Prize, an honour that László Krasznahorkai received in his turn in 2025.