- ENCOUNTERS - A Hungarian Quarterly Reader
- Publishing House: New Hungarian Quarterly
- Year of Publication: 1999
- Number of Pages: 250
- Encounters presents a selection of outstanding recent contributions to The Hungarian Quarterly by major figures of contemporary Hungarian letters as well as distinguished foreign authors. The short stories, poems and essays here featured survey the crucial junctures of twentieth-century Hungarian experience, from the Central European heritage of the Habsburg Empire to the recent transition to a market economy. The reader will learn about the Danube as an ironic emblem; about the love triangle involving Emperor Francis Joseph, the intractable Hungarians and the Empress Elisabeth; the number of individuals to whom thanks are due for one Hungarian Jew's survival in 1944 (hint: they include the composer of the Blue Danube Waltz); the Orwellian minutiae of the most notorious show trial of the Stalinist era; the irrelevance of common sense among hungry people queuing up for bread during the 1956 Revolution; the conflict of values between peasants and Gypsies; the vicissitudes of a Hungarian writer in London, penniless on the wrong train; the eclectic dress code of the nouveaux riches of the nineties. Acute perceptions, quirky gestures and melancholy sensibilities respond here to the drastic realities of history. Aspects of Hungarian life, harrowing and hilarious in turn, appear through the optic of outsiders, while the world at large is viewed in the light of experiences peculiar to the region. The reader of Encounters is invited to form a more vivid and more differentiated picture of a unique culture at the turbulent crossroads of Europe.
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Frankfurt '99
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