This unsparing portrait of a childhood in 1939 Hungary--told in the voice of a brave and unforgettable nine-year-old Jewish girl--is the best sort of memoir, revealing not only a compelling story, but also the bruised yet still bold self which bears the weight of its story in memory (The New York Times Book Review).

    Some of the poets have worked while in exile -- Gyorgy Faludy and Victor Hatar for example. Others, including Sador Kanyadi, are members of Hungarian minorities living outside Hungary's present borders. Those working in Hungary include the middle generation of Otto Orba and Zsusza Takrcs, and younger poets with international reputations such as Gyorgy Petri, known for his sharp satires and ironic elegies, and Zsuzsa Rakovszky, with her passionate and closely observed poems of everyday life.

    Translator Batki demonstrates how contemporary this work remains.

    

    The unnamed narrator is the parasite, feeding off others’ ailments, but he is also a host who attracts people with the most peculiar manias. He confesses, almost amiably, his decadent attraction as a young adolescent to illnesses and hospitals. The real descent into his private, hallucinatory hell begins after his first sexual encounter; he becomes a compulsive masturbator, and then a compulsive fornicator. But to his horror, he realizes that casual sex is not casual at all for him—each one-night stand results in insane jealousy: he can neither abstain nor help imagine previous lovers hovering over him every time he makes love to a woman.   When he gets to know a woman referred to as L., he thinks his demons may have finally subsided. But when he hears of her past, the jealousy returns. He seeks relief through writing—by weaving an imagined tale of L.’s amorous adventures. What will he do with this strange manuscript, and can it bring him healing? A breathtaking blend of Dostoevskian visions, episodes of madness, and intellectual fervor, all delivered in precise, lucid prose, The Parasite is a novel that one cannot escape.