Imre Kertész

The native form of this personal name is Kertész Imre. This article uses the Western name order.
Imre Kertész
Born November 9, 1929 (1929-11-09) (age 81)
Budapest, Hungary
Occupation Novelist
Notable award(s) Nobel Prize in Literature
2002

Imre Kertész (Hungarian pronunciation: [imrɛ ˈkɛrteːs]; born November 9, 1929) is a Hungarian Jewish author, Holocaust concentration camp survivor, and winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature[1] in 2002 "for writing that upholds the fragile experience of the individual against the barbaric arbitrariness of history".

Contents

Biography

He was born on 9 November 1929 in Budapest, Hungary.[2] At the age of 14 he was deported with other Hungarian Jews during World War II to the Auschwitz concentration camp, and was later sent to Buchenwald.[2]

Kertész' best-known work, Fatelessness (Sorstalanság), describes the experience of fifteen-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. His 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[2] and moved to Germany. Kertész started translating German works into Hungarian[2] - 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.[3] He continues to write in Hungarian and submits his works to publishers in Hungary.

A film based on his novel Fatelessness was made in Hungary in 2005 for which he wrote the script.[3] Although sharing the same title, the movie is more autobiographical than the book. The film was released at various dates throughout the world in 2005 and 2006.

Kertész and his wife currently reside in Berlin.

Works

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

Works of Imre Kertész in English

Works about Kertész

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]

References

  1. ↑ "The Nobel Prize in Literature 2002 - Imre Kertész". The Nobel Foundation. http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/2002/press.html. Retrieved 2008-02-09. 
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 "Imre Kertész". Encyclopædia Britannica. http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-9395919/Imre-Kertesz. Retrieved 2008-02-09. 
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 "The Holocaust, From a Teenage View". The New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/03/movies/MoviesFeatures/03fate.html. Retrieved 2008-02-08. 

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Imre Kertesz

External links

Works by Imre Kertész
Novels:
Sorstalanság • A nyomkereső • Detektívtörténet • A kudarc • Kaddis a meg nem született gyermekért • Az angol lobogó • Gályanapló • A holocaust mint kultúra : három előadás • Valaki más : a változás krónikája • A gondolatnyi csend, amíg a kivégzőosztag újratölt • A száműzött nyelv • Felszámolás
Short stories::
"Jegyzőkönyv"
Nobel Laureates in Literature

V. S. Naipaul (2001) · Imre Kertész (2002) · J. M. Coetzee (2003) · Elfriede Jelinek (2004) · Harold Pinter (2005) · Orhan Pamuk (2006) · Doris Lessing (2007) · Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio (2008) · Herta Müller (2009) · Mario Vargas Llosa (2010)
Complete roster · 1901–1925 · 1926–1950 · 1951–1975 · 1976–2000 · 2001–present
2002 Nobel Prize winners
Chemistry: John Bennett Fenn (United States), Koichi Tanaka (Japan), Kurt Wüthrich (Switzerland)
Literature: Imre Kertész (Hungary)
Physiology or Medicine: Sydney Brenner (United Kingdom), H. Robert Horvitz (United States), John E. Sulston (United Kingdom)
Hungarian or Hungarian-Born Nobel Laureates      Flag of Hungary

Lénárd Fülöp (1905) · Bárány Róbert (1914) · Zsigmondy Richárd (1925) · Szent-Györgyi Albert (1937) · Hevesy György (1943) · Békésy György (1961) · Wigner Jenő (1963) · Gábor Dénes (1971) · Polányi János (1986) · Elie Wiesel (1986) · Harsányi János (1994) · Oláh György (1994) · Kertész Imre (2002) · Avram Hershko (2004)