The Paul Street Boys

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The Paul Street Boys is a youth novel by the Hungarian writer Ferenc Molnár (in Hungarian: Molnár Ferenc), first published in 1906.

The novel is about schoolboys in the rapidly developing Budapest at the turn of the 20th century, who defend their playground, the "grund", from the "redshirts", a team of other boys who want to occupy it.

The "battle", fought with "sandbombs" is decided by self-sacrifice of the smallest and weakest Pal street boy, Ernő Nemecsek, whom the other boys earlier called a traitor and whose name they wrote down without capital letters. Nemecsek dies of pneumonia after the battle.

[edit] Status

The book has earned the status of the most famous Hungarian novel in the world. It has been translated into many languages and in several countries (like the UK and Italy) it is a mandatory or recommended reading in schools. Ernő Nemecsek is now ranked there among the eternal heroes of youth literature like Oliver Twist or Tom Sawyer.

While the novel can be easily read in most parts of the world as its story could have happened anywhere and in any age, an 11-year-old Hungarian schoolboy, Dani Bodnar, in 2006 describes the self-sacrifice of Ernő Nemecsek in a school essay this way: "I was very sick. I was thinking about why we had to fight for the grund. Because it was our country, our playing ground, for which we must fight even if we are in fever. Because that's what the grund was for us, our country."

[edit] Film adaptations

• A Pál utcai fiúk film of Hungarian director Béla Balogh in 1929
• No Greater Glory Film of Frank Borzage U.S. director in (1934)
• I ragazzi della via Paal, film of Italy's Alberto Mondadori and Mario Monicelli in 1935
• A Pál utcai fiúk Film of the Hungarian director Zoltán Fábri in 1969