Konrád, György 1933- (George Konrád)

PERSONAL:

Born 1933, in Berettyóújfalu, Hungary; father a machinery shop owner; married; children: five. Education: Attended Debrecen Reform College, the Lenin Institute, and Loránd Eötvös University. Religion: Jewish.

CAREER:

Budapest Institute of Urban Planning and Institute for Literary Scholarship, sociologist, 1965-73; Art Academy, Berlin, Germany, president, 1997-2003; Magyar Helikon, social worker and editor; also worked as a teacher in Csepel, Hungary. Colorado Springs College, visiting professor of comparative literature, 1986.

MEMBER:

International PEN (president, 1990-93).

AWARDS, HONORS:

Herder Prize, 1984; European Essay Prize, 1985; Maecenas Prize, 1989; Manès-Sperber Prize, 1990.

WRITINGS:

(With Ivan Szelenyi) Új lakótelepek szociológiai problémái, Akademiai Kiado, 1969.

A látogató (novel), Magveto (Budapest, Hungary), 1969, translation by Paul Aston and published under name George Konrád as The Case Worker, Harcourt (San Diego, CA), 1974.

(With Péter Bacsó and Péter Zimre) Kitörés, 1975.

(As George Konrád) A városalapító, [Budapest, Hungary], 1977, translation by Ivan Sanders published as The City Builder, Harcourt (San Diego, CA), 1977, reprinted, Dalkey Archive Press (Champaign, IL), 2007.

(As George Konrád) A cinkos (novel), [Budapest, Hungary], 1978, translation by Ivan Sanders published as The Loser, Harcourt (San Diego, CA), 1982.

(With Iván Szelényi) Az értelmiség útja az osztáslyhatalomhoz, 1978, translated by Andrew Arato and Richard E. Allen as The Intellectuals on the Road to Class Power, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich (New York, NY), 1979.

Az autonómia kísértése: kelet-nyugati, Magyar Fuzetek (Paris, France), 1980.

(As George Konrád) Antipolitika, 1983, translation by Richard E. Allen published as Antipolitics: An Essay, Harcourt (San Diego, CA), 1984.

Agenda 1: Kerti mulatsag: regeny es munkanaplo (first book in a trilogy), Magveto (Budapest, Hungary), 1989, translation by Imre Goldstein published under name George Konrád as A Feast in the Garden, Harcourt, 1992.

Az Autonomia Kisertese; Antipolitika, Codex RT (Budapest, Hungary), 1989.

Európa köldökén: esszek 1979-1989, Magveto (Budapest, Hungary), 1990.

Az ujjaszuletes melankoliaja, Patria Konyvek (Budapest), 1991, translation by Michael Henry Heim published under name George Konrád as The Melancholy of Rebirth: Essays from Post-Communist Central Europe, 1989-1994, Harcourt (San Diego, CA), 1995.

91-93, Pesti Szalon (Budapest, Hungary), 1993.

Varakozas: esszek, cikkek, naploreszletek, Pesti Szalon (Budapest, Hungary), 1995.

Agenda 2: Koóra (second book in a trilogy), Pesti Szalon (Budapest, Hungary), 1995, translation by Ivan Sanders published under name George Konrád as Stonedial, Harcourt (San Diego, CA), 2000.

Aramlo leltar: elmelkedesek, Pesti Szalon (Budapest, Hungary), 1996.

A lathatatlan hang: zsido targyu elmelkedesek, Palatinus (Budapest, Hungary), 1997.

Utrakeszen: egy berlini mutteremben: esszek, cikkek, tanulmanyok, Palatinus (Budapest, Hungary), 1999.

Die Erweiterung der Mitte Europa und Osteuropa am, Picus (Vienna, Austria), 1999.

A jugoszlaviai haboru (es ami utana johet): jegyzetek 1999-ben marciustol juniusig, Palatinus (Budapest, Hungary), 1999.

Östlich von Eden: von der DDR nach Deutschland 1974-1999, Brandstátter (Vienna, Austria), 1999.

(As George Konrád) The Invisible Voice: Meditations on Jewish Themes, translation by Peter Reich, Harcourt (San Diego, CA), 2000.

Urbanizáció és területi gazdálkodás, JGYF Kiado (Szeged, Hungary), 2000.

Mit tud a levelibéka? válogatott esszék, naplórészletek (1973-1996), Palatinus (Budapest, Hungary), 2000.

Fenn a hegyen napfogyatkozáskor: Önéletrajzi regény, Noran (Budapest, Hungary), 2003.

A közép tágulása: gondolkodás európáról, Noran (Budapest, Hungary), 2004.

Az író és a város: esszék, elóadások, Noran (Budapest, Hungary), 2004.

A Guest in My Own Country: A Hungarian Life (memoir; originally published as Elutazás és Hazatérés), edited by Michael Henry Heim, Other Press (New York, NY), 2007.

SIDELIGHTS:

György Konrád grew up in a small village in eastern Hungary. During the Nazi occupation in 1944 his parents were arrested. Then eleven years old, Konrád had heard about the mass deportation of Jews that was taking place and knew that he and his younger sister must leave town, but Jews were not allowed to travel on trains. Konrád found his father's hidden money and bribed the local police to give them passes to Budapest, where his aunt lived. The day after they left, all the Jews from his village were deported. The women and children were sent to concentration camps in Auschwitz, where nearly all of them died, and the men were sent as forced laborers to the Ukrainian front.

When Konrád and his sister returned home in 1945, they found many of the Jewish men waiting for their families to return. In an interview for the New York Times Book Review, Konrád told Patricia Blake: "These men kept staring at us, and you could see they were thinking ‘It's good you're alive, but what about our children?’ … I don't think I am exaggerating when I say that I had the thought that I must live in place of my old school friends. I felt I had to substitute for those dead Jewish children. I am not only myself."

In 1974 Konrád and fellow author Ivan Szelenyi were arrested and imprisoned in Budapest. Police had found hidden in Szelenyi's apartment a manuscript of their sociological study called "The Intelligentsia on the Road to Class Power," and charged them with subversive agitation. After six days in jail they were released because the manuscript had never been available to the public. The book was banned and Konrád was told he could leave the country if he felt he could not obey the law. However, said Konrád, "it would have been rather cowardly to emigrate as a result of a case that turned out not to be so serious after all…. If he isn't forced to it, a writer should not emigrate, should not turn away from the risks of his profession. He must accept those risks and live with them; he must be free wherever he finds himself."

Praised by many critics as a "stunning first novel," Konrád's The Case Worker is a first-person narrative about the life of a social worker cracking under the strain of the wretchedness and cruelty he must deal with each day. "Such raw human suffering as is depicted here is infrequently the subject of works of fiction," cited a New Yorker critic, "and even more infrequently the theme of a writer as skilled, brilliant, and willing to take risks as Mr. Konrád. This is an almost unbearable book to read, but it should not be missed."

Reviewing Konrád's novel The Loser, in Time, Patricia Blake asserted that Konrád "takes the ultimate journey of the modern European, piling horror upon horror on the way: the Holocaust, the Gulag, the carnage of World War II, the postwar purges in Eastern Europe, the failed 1956 Hungarian uprising. The literature documenting the inhumanity of the age is vast. Yet Konrád's masterly new novel offers fresh insight into the cruel stratagems of totalitarian rule."

Antipolitics: An Essay is a collection of essays. Walter Goodman wrote in the New York Times Book Review that the title refers to "a method of dealing with reality that shuns confrontation; the lesson of the Soviet repression of the 1956 Hungarian uprising is only too fresh. An obsession with ideology, [Konrád] believes, is the sure way to destruction…. Instead, he puts his hopes in a gradual lessening of economic controls and of censorship, incremental steps that will not alarm Moscow."

A Publishers Weekly reviewer felt that parts of A Feast in the Garden "are interesting, fresh, and valuable, but still more are confusing and poorly thought out." Herbert Mitgang, writing in the New York Times Book Review, noted that Konrád again "filters the story through his own personality." The central character, young David Kobra, watches his parents put on trains that will take them from their small town in Hungary to the death camps. "But having captured our attention with an emblematic character living through the horror of the Holocaust, the novelist then retreats to the comfort of autobiography," stated Mitgang. "Although A Feast in the Garden is self-conscious and frequently stumbles under the weight of dozens of characters, some of the scenes and personalities are vivid…. The reader encounters the author's parents, grandparents, siblings, friends, and neighbors as they perish or survive through two World Wars, the Holocaust, the cold war police state, the confusions of freedom, and visits to America."

The Melancholy of Rebirth: Essays from Post-Communist Central Europe, 1989-1994, is a collection of twenty-six speeches, essays, diary entries, and other texts that a Publishers Weekly reviewer called "melancholy and optimistic at the same time." The reviewer described Konrád as "a cheerleader for democracy and individualism."

Janos Dragoman, the protagonist of Stonedial, bears some resemblance to Konrád. The narrator returns to Kandor, Hungary, a city similar to Budapest, to discover a daughter and grandson he never knew and to seek out old friends, many of whom are former lovers. An argument with a political reactionary about an incident that occurred during the 1956 revolt ends with Dragoman killing the man. Dragoman was indirectly responsible for the deaths of six protestors who were executed by the Russians. Now, with his return, new accidents and deaths are linked to his writings and actions, although he is never directly involved. "In other words, the past repeats itself in farcical fashion," related Richard Bernstein in the New York Times Book Review. Bernstein suggested that whatever the lesson is, "it is a complicated and ambiguous one, but surely it has something to do with the way the tendrils of our fate intertwine with all that has happened before and with everyone whose lives ours touch. Mr. Konrád's novel … is too wordy, too indulgent of its author's random thoughts. But reading it, one is always in contact with a deeply informed awareness of the tragic and the tragically comic in human life, and that is what gives this book its force."

A Publishers Weekly reviewer noted that the story switches from first-to third-person accounts, that the first two-thirds of the book provides the history and background of Dragoman, and that in the last third, "the plot suddenly crystallizes." The reviewer consequently called Stonedial a "lumbering work." But Andrea Caron Kempf wrote in Library Journal that Stonedial "furthers Konrád's reputation as one of Europe's most exciting novelists."

Booklist reviewer George Cohen called The Invisible Voice: Meditations on Jewish Themes "absorbing and perceptive." The twenty essays, written by Konrád between 1985 and 1997, include discussions of relations between Israel and Palestine, the Diaspora Jew, personal responsibility, and assimilation. Library Journal contributor Gene Shaw believed that Konrád defends "a secular, cosmopolitan, liberal, and tolerant political position." A Publishers Weekly reviewer wrote: "His probing mind provokes further meditations and yields many insights."

A Guest in My Own Country: A Hungarian Life is Konrád's "powerful, highly literary memoir" of his life in Hungary, commented a Publishers Weekly reviewer. Combining material from two volumes that already appeared in Hungary, the book delves into Konrád's childhood during the horrors of the Holocaust and World War II. Frankly and calmly, he describes the atrocities he witnesses and the travails he endured, particularly the profound effects he felt as the only surviving Jewish pupil from his school. Elsewhere, he describes his experiences as an older student, intellectual, and active participant during the Hungarian Revolution in the mid-1950s. Unlike other intellectuals of the time, who fled Hungary for fear of their lives, Konrád was able to remain in his home country during the turmoil of the revolution. He also outlines the development of his professional life from the 1950s to the 1970s, and the effect his experiences had on him as an adult and as a writer. In 1974, for example, he was offered the chance to emigrate, but chose again to remain in Hungary; subsequently, many of his books were banned, and he experienced the acute sense of repression that such censorship involved. Konrád's "recollections and reflections have a distinctive quality," observed Paul Hollander in the Weekly Standard. "A unique blend of detachment and attachment, fatalism and purposefulness, as well as seriousness and playfulness permeate these pages. Konrád writes in a matter-of-fact style, yet eloquently, without apparent moral indignation about the politically induced childhood traumas and the less-than-life-threatening injustices and deprivations under communism."

The book "has its idiosyncrasies, not least a chronology that bounces around," commented Alan Riding in the New York Times Book Review. Despite these structural troubles, Riding felt that the memoir still works. "Along with his own comings and goings, Konrád offers touching family portraits and droll anecdotes as well as meaty reflections on life and literature," Riding mused. "It is like listening to a charming old uncle reminiscing over dinner: he may be a bit hard to follow, but no one wants to interrupt him." Library Journal reviewer Maria C. Bagshaw commented that "this book is fascinating on many levels (philosophical, historical, political, and as a work of literature)." The Publishers Weekly reviewer concluded: "This memoir provokes in unexpected ways that linger after it is read."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

Contemporary Literary Criticism, Gale (Detroit, MI), Volume 4, 1975, Volume 10, 1979.

Konrád, George, A Guest in My Own Country: A Hungarian Life, Other Press (New York, NY), 2007.

PERIODICALS

Booklist, May 1, 2000, George Cohen, review of The Invisible Voice: Meditations on Jewish Themes, p. 1646.

Books, April 29, 2007, review of A Guest in My Own Country: A Hungarian Life, p. 8.

Choice, September, 1974, review of The Case Worker, p. 953.

City Magazine, spring, 1989, review of The City Builder.

Commentary, June, 1980, Paul Hollander, review of The Intellectuals on the Road to Class Power, p. 78.

Library Journal, April 15, 1995, review of The Melancholy of Rebirth, p. 100; March 1, 2000, Andrea Caron Kempf, review of Stonedial, p. 124; April 1, 2000, Gene Shaw, review of The Invisible Voice, p. 106; July 1, 2007, Maria C. Bagshaw, review of A Guest in My Own Country, p. 98.

London Review of Books, November 19, 1992, review of A Feast in the Garden, p. 15.

Los Angeles Times Book Review, June 4, 1995, review of The Melancholy of Rebirth, p. 15.

New Republic, March 16, 1974, review of The Case Worker, p. 25; January 5, 1980, "The Novelists: George Konrád," p. 24, and Alvin W. Gouldner, review of The Road of the Intellectuals to Class Power, p. 28; April 2, 2007, "Fatefulness," p. 52.

New Statesman, July 25, 1980, Nicholas Shrimpton, review of The City Builder, p. 21.

New Yorker, March 11, 1974, review of The Case Worker, p. 134; April 10, 1978, Susan Lardner, review of The City Builder, p. 141.

New York Review of Books, August 8, 1974, review of The Case Worker, p. 14; March 20, 1980, Michael Walzer, review of The Intellectuals on the Road to Class Power, p. 37.

New York Times Book Review, January 27, 1974, review of The Case Worker, p. 1; January 22, 1978, Jascha Kessler, "From Eastern Europe: A Book and a Man," review of The City Builder, p. 12; January 22, 1978, Patricia Blake, interview with György Konrád, p. 20; May 17, 1984, Walter Goodman, review of Antipolitics: An Essay; May 13, 1992, Herbert Mitgang, "Experimental Novel of Hungary's Trek to Freedom," review of A Feast in the Garden; January 2, 1994, review of A Feast in the Garden, p. 20; June 7, 2000, Richard Bernstein, "Bittersweet Homecoming for a Well-traveled Exile," review of Stonedial; April 29, 2007, Alan Riding, "My Crazy Life," review of A Guest in My Own Country.

Observer (London, England), November 8, 1992, review of A Feast in the Garden, p. 59.

Partisan Review, fall, 1991, "Hungary."

Publishers Weekly, October 16, 1987, review of The City Builder, p. 90; February 3, 1992, review of A Feast in the Garden, p. 61; February 27, 1995, review of The Melancholy of Rebirth, p. 100; March 20, 2000, review of Stonedial, p. 70; May 1, 2000, review of The Invisible Voice, p. 65; January 22, 2007, review of A Guest in My Own Country, p. 172.

Time, January 17, 1983, Patricia Blake, review of The Loser, p. 70.

Times Literary Supplement, January 31, 1975, review of The Case Worker, p. 101; October 30, 1992, review of A Feast in the Garden, p. 19.

Village Voice, February 28, 1974, review of The Case Worker, p. 23.

Washington Post, July 16, 2000, "Killer Intellectuals," p. 4.

Weekly Standard, July 9, 2007, Paul Hollander, "Book of Memories; The Charmed Life of a Modern Hungarian Writer."

ONLINE

Kirjasto.sfi.fi,http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/ (October 1, 2007), biography of George Konrád.