Imre Kertész

The native form of this personal name is Kertész Imre. This article uses the Western name order.

Imre Kertész
Imre Kertész in Szeged (2007)
Born	(1929-11-09) 9 November 1929 Budapest, Hungary
Occupation	Novelist
Ethnicity	Jewish
Notable work(s)	Fatelessness Kaddish for a Child Not Born Liquidation
Notable award(s)	Nobel Prize in Literature 2002

Imre Kertész (Hungarian pronunciation: [imrɛ ˈkɛrteːs]; born 9 November 1929) is a Hungarian Jewish author, Holocaust concentration camp survivor, and recipient of the 2002 Nobel Prize in Literature, "for writing that upholds the fragile experience of the individual against the barbaric arbitrariness of history". Born in Budapest, Hungary, he resides in Berlin with his wife.

Background

During World War II, Kertész was deported at the age of 14 with other Hungarian Jews to the Auschwitz concentration camp, and was later sent to Buchenwald. His best-known work, Fatelessness (Sorstalanság), describes the experience of 15-year-old György (George) Köves in the concentration camps of Auschwitz, Buchenwald and Zeitz. Some have interpreted the book as quasi-autobiographical, but the author disavows a strong biographical connection. In 2005, a film based on the novel, for which he wrote the script, was made in Hungary. Although sharing the same title, the film is more autobiographical than the book: it was released internationally at various dates in 2005 and 2006.

Kertész's writings translated into English include Kaddish for a Child Not Born (Kaddis a meg nem született gyermekért) and Liquidation (Felszámolás). Kertész initially found little appreciation for his writing in Hungary and moved to Germany. Kertész started translating German works into Hungarian — such as The Birth of Tragedy by Nietzsche, the plays of Dürrenmatt, Schnitzler and Tankred Dorst, the thoughts of Wittgenstein — and did not publish another novel until the late 1980s. He continues to write in Hungarian and submits his works to publishers in Hungary.

He criticized Steven Spielberg's depiction of the Holocaust in his 1993 film Schindler's List as kitsch, saying: "I regard as kitsch any representation of the Holocaust that is incapable of understanding or unwilling to understand the organic connection between our own deformed mode of life and the very possibility of the Holocaust."

List of works

• Fateless (Sorstalanság) (1975). English Translations:

• Fateless, 1992 (ISBN 0-8101-1049-0 and ISBN 0-8101-1024-5),
• Fatelessness, 2004 (ISBN 1-4000-7863-6)

• A nyomkereső (The Pathseeker) (1977)
• Detektívtörténet (A Detective Story) (1977)
• A kudarc (The Failure) (1988)

• Fiasco, 2011 (ISBN 1-9355-5429-8)

• Kaddis a meg nem született gyermekért (1990). English Translations:

• Kaddish for an Unborn Child (translated by Tim Wilkinson), 2004, ISBN 1-4000-7862-8
• Kaddish for a Child Not Born (translated by Christopher C. Wilson and Katharina M. Wilson), 1999, ISBN 0-8101-1161-6

• Az angol lobogó (The Union Jack) (1991)
• Gályanapló (Galley Boat-Log) (1992)
• A holocaust mint kultúra: három előadás (The Holocaust As Culture: Three Lectures) (1993)
• Jegyzőkönyv (The Minutes of Meeting) (1993)
• Valaki más : a változás krónikája (Someone Other: The Cronicle of the Changing) (1997)
• A gondolatnyi csend, amíg a kivégzőosztag újratölt (A Breath-long Silence, While the Fire Squad is Reloading Their Guns) (1998)
• A száműzött nyelv (A Language in Exile) (2001)
• Felszámolás (Liquidation) (2003)
• K. dosszié (File "K.") (2006)
• Európa nyomasztó öröksége (Europe's Depressing Heritage) (2008)

Works of Imre Kertész in English

• Fatelessness (translated by Tim Wilkinson), New York: Knopf, 2004.
• Fateless (translated by Christopher C. Wilson and Katharina M. Wilson), Northwestern University Press, 1992, ISBN 0-8101-1049-0
• Kaddish for an Unborn Child (translated by Tim Wilkinson), Vintage, 2004. ISBN 1-4000-7862-8
• Kaddish for a Child Not Born (translated by Christopher C. Wilson and Katharina M. Wilson), Evanston, Illinois: Hydra Books, 1997, ISBN 0-8101-1161-6
• Liquidation (translated by Tim Wilkinson, Knopf, 2004, ISBN 1-4000-4153-8
• Detective Story (translated by Tim Wilkinson), Harvill Secker, 2008, ISBN 1-84655-183-8
• The Pathseeker (translated by Tim Wilkinson), Melville House Publishing, 2008, ISBN 978-1-933633-53-4
• The Union Jack (translated by Tim Wilkinson), Melville House Publishing, 2010, ISBN 978-1-933633-87-9
• Fiasco (translated by Tim Wilkinson), Melville House Publishing, 2011, ISBN 978-1-935554-29-5

Further reading

• Vasvári, Louise O., and Tötösy de Zepetnek, Steven, eds. Imre Kertész and Holocaust Literature. West Lafayette: Purdue UP, 2005.[1]
  
• Vasvári, Louise O., and Tötösy de Zepetnek, Steven, eds. Comparative Central European Holocaust Studies. West Lafayette: Purdue UP, 2009.[2]
  
• Molnár, Sára. "Nobel in Literature 2002 Imre Kertész's Aesthetics of the Holocaust," CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture 5.1 (2003)[3]
  
• Tötösy de Zepetnek, Steven. "And the 2002 Nobel Prize for Literature Goes to Imre Kertész, Jew and Hungarian," CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture 5.1 (2003)[4]
  
• Tötösy de Zepetnek, Steven. "Imre Kertész's Nobel Prize, Public Discourse, and the Media," CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture 7.4 (2005)[5]

See also

• List of Jewish Nobel laureates

External links

• Article on Kertész
• The Last Word - an interview with Kertész from Holocaust Survivors and Remembrance Project: "Forget You Not"
• Fateless at the Internet Movie Database Hungary
• Imre Kertész—Nobel Lecture
• B.-ing There, a review of the novel Liquidation by Ben Ehrenreich, Village Voice, December 20, 2004