GÉZA OTTLIK
[biography] - [quotes] - [publications]

 

- 1931 first stories published
- 1957 Hajnali háztetők (et. Rooftops at Dawn) Short novel, later made into a successful film.
- 1959 Iskola a határon (et. 1966 School at the Frontier) A novel about childhood and adolescence, about the frontier that boys cross when they enter boarding school. "Each year seven new pupils are admitted to a military academy where they come under the domination of two noncoms who drill and supervise them, one a harmlessly shouting, the other a viciously snarling, brute. Worse, they are subjected to the senseless and cruel bullying of a group of older boys. The attempts of the new boys to behave with decency and to preserve their individual dignity intact meet with disaster. With extraordinary finesse, the author describes their reactions to the psychological shock, ranging from protective impassivity to paralyzing self-consciousness." (From the jacket of the English publisher) The book enjoys a cult-like status in Hungarian literature. Péter Esterházy writes: "Morning and night he [Esterházy] was copying, as if he were engaged in prayer, Ottlik's School on the Frontier on a single sheet of white paper... When he started on the last page his heart began to pound as if it were in a cage, really, and wanted to jump out. He was overcome by trepidation. His hands were shaking and after every sentence he had to put his pen down. He was terrified by the thought that just before the finishing line he'd ruin it, three month's work down the drain." (from A Little Hungarian Pornography)
- 1969 Minden megvan (et. Nothing's Lost) Short stories. Revised, enlarged edition in 1991.
- 1980 Próza (et. Prose) A volume of miscellaneous writings about the writer's and the translator's craft, about the possibilities and the role of the modern novel; reviews, essays on former Hungarian authors; as well as personal memories and interviews. "For me writing is a slow and painful process, even the shortest review or essay takes a bitter effort. For this, of course, you need a precious inbuilt instrument that very silently but stubbornly resents something you have written." (Géza Ottlik)
- 1989 A Valencia-rejtély. Hajónapló. (et. The Valencia Enigma, 1991 Logbook) Shorter fiction.
- 1993 Buda. Novel. "In a word, Buda is to some extent a nostalgic retrospection, an attempt 'á la recherche du temps perdu.' Its diachronic and not particularly cohesive structure brings it closer to the literature of postmodernism." (George Gömöri)

 

 

FOREIGN LANGUAGE PUBLICATIONS

School at the Frontier. Tr. Kathleen Szasz, N.Y., Harcourt, Brace & World, 1966.
German: tr. Charlotte Ujlaky. Frankfurt a. M.: Fischer, 1963.; tr. Ita Szent-Iványi,
Berlin: Volk u. Welt, 1973.
French: tr. Ladislas Gara, Georges Kassai, Georges Spitzer, Paris: Ed. du Seuil, 1964.
Serbo-Croatian: tr. Ivo Meden,
Zagreb: Zora, 1967.
Polish: tr. by Tadeusz Olszanski,
Warsaw: PIW, 1973, and 1980.
Czech: tr. Mila Zadrazilova, Prague: Odeon, 1974.
Spanish: tr by Fernando Caralt. Barcelona- Buenos Aires-Mexico D.F.: Grijalbo, 1975.
Slovakian: tr. Karol Wlachovsky,
Bratislava: Tatran, 1976.
Swedish: tr. Calman de Pándy,
Stockholm: ANE/ Geber, 1976.
Russian: tr. V.A. Szmirnov,
Moscow: Hudoz. Lit. 1983.
Rumanian: tr. by Lia Meltzer,
Bucharest: Univers, 1988.
Italian: Rome: e/o, 1992.
Slovenian: Ljubljana: Cankarjeva zalozba, 1995.

Hajónapló
Logbook, in: A Hungarian Quartet, Four Contemporary Short Novels. tr. by Ferenc Takács, Budapest: Corvina, 1991.

Nothing's Lost. Short story, in Nothing's Lost: Twenty-five Hungarian Short Stories,
Budapest: Corvina, 1988.

Hajnali háztetők
Serbian: Krovovi u svitanju: tr. Aleksandar Tisma, Novi Sad: Matica srpska, 1990.

 

 

[biography] - [quotes] - [publications]

 

 

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