The Hungarian literature that makes it to the world stage—writers like Nádas and Krasznahorkai—have been lionized by the international intelligentsia to the point where they are perennial candidates for the Nobel Prize. But there is a whole new crop of writers making waves with their work in translation. More accessible, less foreboding than their predecessors, there is a lot to enjoy in Hungary’s up and coming literati. Though more and more Hungarian writers are appearing in translation, we’ve chosen three personal favorites to showcase below.

György Dragomán is best known for his second novel, The White King, which was translated into 28 languages, and published in English by prestigious publishers in the UK and USA. It tells the semi-autobiographical tale of a Hungarian child in Transylvania whose father is a political prisoner under the Communist regime. The New York Times effused: “Utopia and its discontents, so central to Eastern European writers, are central to Gyorgy Dragoman’s darkly beautiful novel. A scathing portrait of life in a totalitarian society, The White King is both brutal and disarmingly tender.”

His most recent release in English is called The Bone Fire, and it too was widely praised by the international press. Finicky Kirkus Reviews called it, “A poignant coming-of-age tale set against the backdrop of regime change.”

Much beloved in his home country, Dragoman also is increasingly finding a much deserved audience abroad.

Short stories always a hard sell, but Krisztina Tóth found success with her first full-length English language release, entitled Pixel. Described as a ‘novel in 30 chapters’. The back cover copy describes this intuitive novel in stories as such: “Like stars in the sky, pixels may seem like tiny, individual points. But, when viewed from a distance, they can create elaborate images. Each pixel contributes to this array, but no individual point can create the whole. The thirty stories that comprise Krisztina Tóth's book similarly produce an interconnected web. While each tale of love, loss, and failed self-determination narrates the sensuousness of an individual's life, together, the thirty stories tell a more complicated tale of relationships.”

India’s Seagull Books put out the English language edition. While it didn’t receive the attention of writers like Dragoman, the reviews have been uniformly strong, with hip literature site LitHub saying that the book: Addresses the crises facing Europe today: the influx of immigrants and resulting xenophobia, mounting anti-Semitism and anti-Roma bigotry, the validity of the European Union versus nation-specific loyalties. . . . Even as Tóth slices her characters into single limbs and facial features, there’s no escaping their interconnectedness. In this way, Tóth makes the concept of a national 'border' seem laughably arbitrary."

Tóth is also a poet and translator, and a writer we are predicting great things for.

Ferenc Barnás has received most major literary prizes in Hungary, and consistently seen his books published in English and languages as distant as Indonesian. Released in 2020 in English, The Parasite is described as such by its publisher, Seagull Books: “Marked by powerful and evocative prose, Ferenc Barnás’s novel tells the fascinating story of a young man’s journey through his strange obsessions towards possible recovery. The unnamed narrator is the parasite, feeding off others’ ailments, but he is also a host who attracts people with the most peculiar manias.”

Of his lush, heartfelt prose in his novel, The Ninth, The Quarterly Conversation wrote: “Telling a story from a child’s point of view is one of the most difficult modes of fiction to write successfully. The narrator of Ferenc Barnás’s The Ninth is a nine-year-old boy—The Ninth child of ten (eleven, counting the brother who died) in a large Hungarian family—whose inexperience and bare vocabulary are compounded by a speech disability. “

Barnás’ past and present don’t fit the mould of the typical Hungarian writer, as he spent a good portion of his life working as a museum attendant before moving to live and write in Jakarta, Indonesia, full time.

If you have a favorite contemporary Hungarian writer we should know about, please inform us in the comments.

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