Szilvia Molnar

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Szilvia Molnar (born 24 September 1984) is a writer and translator who has written both verse and short prose in Swedish and English. She lives in London, England.

Molnar was born in Budapest, Hungary, on 24 September, 1984, but moved with her family to Sweden when she was four. She grew up in Bjuv, Sweden, where she spoke Swedish and Hungarian and began to learn English.

Her first publication was a short piece in the February, 2005 edition (No. 9) of The Wolf. This was followed by a short prose piece (in Swedish) in Biblioteket & Jag (also 2005) (ISBN 91-631-6920-7). She has also published poetry in the UK literary periodical The Ugly Tree and the London peculiar Smoke. She is the winner of awards for short-story writing (in Sweden: Ordfront magazine, 2006) and for translation (in Hungary, for her translations of Imre Oravecz from Hungarian into Swedish, Bálint Balassi Institute, 2006).

Molnar's writing in English is spare, bordering on the minimalist. She compresses the ups and downs of a romance into one sentence as 'There is always a chase which usually includes me running barefoot (where are my shoes?) and there is always him being persistent outside my door throwing pebbles at my window so I will throw him my keys', and presents a dysfunctional family's failure to communicate through a game of Scrabble: 'But the television would still mumble in the background. This is because we wouldn't want to have an awkward silence in the middle of our game. Since fun is not quiet.' Combustion in the family fireplace: 'I always think of the first flames as noble ones. They seem to be so proud of gnawing through the wood, only to become stronger.'

[edit] References

from webpage at Ordfront: Szilvia Molnar är årets yngsta debutant, blott 21 år gammal. Hon pluggar ungerska och östeuropeisk litteratur i London och har just nu utbytesår i Budapest. Hennes novell Det här är ett försök att ge mig till John sprudlar av språklig experimentlusta och är en originell och egensinnig uppväxtskildring.

From webpage at nepszava.hu 2006.05.10: A Balassi Intézet műfordítői pályázatán a jelentkezők Csáth Géza, Oravecz Imre és Borbély Szilárd műveinek fordítása közül választhattak. Minden pályázó a saját nyelvére fordította le a választott alkotást. Az első helyezett a szerb Zlatko Omerbasic lett, második díjban részesült megosztva: a német Heike Flemming és az orosz Anna Pervozvanskaya, harmadik helyezést ért el szintén megosztva az észt Mariliis Laurend, a török Irmak Birgücü és a svéd Molnár Szilvia.