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Péter Esterházy
Biography
Gore Vidal has complained that American readers will enthuse over a European post-modern novel but ignore an American writer producing something similar. He may well have had the likes of Péter Esterházy in mind. Esterházy was descended from one of Hungary’s most aristocratic families. The family was the patron of the composer Haydn and Esterházy’s grandfather was Prime Minister of Hungary. However, by the time he was born in 1950, his family were class enemies. He studied mathematics at the University of Budapest and then worked as a computer systems operator, which he used as a basis for his first novel Termelési-regény. Kisssregény (A Novel of Production), which had considerable success, not least because it subverted the traditional Soviet-style workplace novel. He has gone on to write several more post-modernist novels. He died in 2016.
Other links
Péter Esterházy
Péter Esterházy
Honoring a European Troublemaker
Interview
Bibliography
(Only books translated into English)
1983 Fuharosok (The Transporters in A Hungarian Quartet: Four Contemporary Short Novels)
1984 Kis magyar pornográfia (A Little Hungarian pornography)
1985 Szív segédigéi (Helping Verbs of the Heart)
1990 Hrabal könyve (The Book of Hrabal)
1991 Hahn-Hahn grófno pillantása (The Glance of Countess Hahn-Hahn: Down the Danube)
1995 Egy nîo (She Loves Me)
2000 Harmonia cælestis (Celestial Harmonies)
2008 Semmi művészet (Not Art)