Agota Kristof
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Agota Kristof is an hungarian writer, who lives in Switzerland and writes in french.
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[edit] Biography
Kristof was born on October 30, 1935. At the age of 21 she had to leave her country when the Hungarian anti-communist revolution was suppressed by the Soviet military. She, her husband (who used to be her history teacher at school) and their 4 months old daughter escaped to Neuchâtel in Switzerland. After 5 years of loneliness and exile, she quit her work in a factory and left her husband. She started studying French and began to write novels in that language.
[edit] Her works
Agota Kristof's first step as a writer were in the realm of poetry and theater (John et Joe, Un rat qui passe), which is a facet of her works that did not have as great an impact as her Notebook trilogy. In 1986 Kristof’s first novel, The Notebook appeared. It was the beginning of a moving trilogy. The sequel titled The Proof came 2 years later. The third part was published in 1991 under the title The Third Lie. The most important themes of this trilogy are war and destruction, love and loneliness, desire and loss, truth and fiction.
Agota Kristof received the European prize for French literature for The Notebook. This novel was translated in more than 30 languages.
In 1995 she published a new book, Yesterday. Her fifth novel, The Illiterate, was also her first biography, and was finished in 2004. She writes not only novels, but also poems and plays.
Agota Kristof also wrote a book called "l'analphabete" translated, "The Illiterate". This is her autobiography. It explores her love of reading as a young child, and we travel with her to boarding school, and over the border to Austria, and then to Switzerland. Forced to leave due to the war and the communists, she hopes for a better life in Zurich, but she does not have a good life at all. :(
[edit] Trivia
Shigesato Itoi, creator of the Mother videogame series, was heavily influenced by The Notebook; it inspired the third installment of his series, Mother 3. The main characters of the game, Claus and Lucas, are based on the books.
[edit] Bibliography
- 1986: the notebook / le grand cahier
- 1988: the proof / la preuve
- 1991: the third lie / la troisième mensonge
- 1995: yesterday / hier
- 2004: the illiterate / l’analphabète
