Best of
Hungary

2001

Tranquility


Attila Bartis - 2001
    Andor Weér, a thirty-six-year-old writer, lives in a cramped apartment with his shut-in mother, Rebeka, who was once among the most celebrated stage actresses in Budapest. Unable to withstand her maniacal tyranny but afraid to leave her alone, their bitter interdependence spirals into a Sartrian hell of hatred, lies, and appeasement. Then Andor meets the beautiful and nurturing Eszter, a woman who seems to have no past, and they fall wildly in love at first sight. With a fulfilling life seemingly within reach for the first time, Andor decides that he is ready to bring Eszter home to meet Mother. Though Bartis’s characters are unrepentantly neurotic and dressed in the blackest humor, his empathy for them is profound. A political farce of the highest ironic order, concluding that "freedom is a condition unsuitable for humans," Tranquility is ultimately, at its splanchnic core, a complex psychodrama turned inside out, revealing with visceral splendor the grotesque notion that there’s nothing funnier than unhappiness.

The Realm of St. Stephen: A History of Medieval Hungary


Pál Engel - 2001
    Pál Engel traces the establishment of the medieval kingdom of Hungary from its conquest by the Magyar tribes in 895 until defeat by the Ottomans at the battle of Mohacs in 1526. He shows the development of the dominant Magyars who, upon inheriting an almost empty land, absorbed the remaining Slavic peoples into their culture after the original communities had largely disappeared. Engel's book is an accessible and highly readable history.

Hungarian: An Essential Grammar


Carol H. Rounds - 2001
    Suitable for beginning, intermediate and advanced students, it can be used by those studying independently or following a taught course. Topics include: * verbal prefixes* aspect and tense* word-formation mechanisms* linking vowels* the case system and its uses* word order.Appendices include the formation of irregular verbs, complete noun declensions and irregular noun patterns.

A Testament of Revolution


Bela Liptak - 2001
    Written in 1956 in an Austrian refugee camp, the memoir details the events of the conflict and the author's own experience.