Famous at home. Unknown in English.

Aegon 2018 · Shortlist

Omertà

Omerta

Andrea Tompa · 46 when first published

Novel · 724 pages · Historical, Politics, Love

AIAI-generated summary:In 1950s Cluj, under a tightening Communist dictatorship, a peasant woman, a young city girl, a nun and a rose breeder tell how their lives cross, and how they fall into a love triangle.

Also: Libri 2018 ★ winner

Aegon 2018 · Shortlist

Story of a Stammer

Egy dadogás története

Gábor Vida

Novel · 412 pages · Family, Autofiction, Historical

AIAI-generated summary:A writer growing up near Arad in Romania tells his own life and his parents', and those of earlier generations, between the Hungarian border and the Székely Land, to invent himself a homeland.

Also: Libri 2018 shortlist

Aegon 2017 · Shortlist

The Most Beautiful Night of the Soul

A lélek legszebb éjszakája

Sándor Jászberényi · 36 when first published

Short stories · 200 pages · War

AIAI-generated summary:Stories narrated by a disillusioned Hungarian war correspondent who escapes a dishonest world into war zones, alcohol, opium and brief love affairs across the Middle East and Africa.

Also: Libri 2017 ★ winner

Aegon 2016 · Shortlist

The End

A vége

Attila Bartis · 47 when first published

Novel · 600 pages · Love, Politics

AIAI-generated summary:In a small town in Communist Hungary, a boy loses his mother and moves to Budapest with his father, where he grows up to become a photographer whose life is driven by images and by love.

Also: Libri 2016 shortlist

Aegon 2015 · Shortlist

The Bone Fire

Máglya

György Dragomán · 41 when first published

Novel · 480 pages · Coming of age, Family, Politics

AIAI-generated summary:After the dictator has been shot, thirteen-year-old Emma, who has lost her home and her parents, is taken in by a grandmother she has never known, in a country where the unburied past is still painfully alive.

Aegon 2014 · Shortlist

The World Goes On

Megy a világ

László Krasznahorkai · 59 when first published

Short stories · 288 pages

AIAI-generated summary:Stories and speeches in three parts, in which a narrator speaks, then tells, then takes his leave, encountering Gagarin, a flightless Okinawan rail, a homeless man in the Berlin metro and Nietzsche in Turin.

Also: International Booker 2018 shortlist

Aegon 2014 · Shortlist

The Dispossessed

Nincstelenek

Szilárd Borbély · 50 when first published

Novel · 288 pages · Coming of age, Family

AIAI-generated summary:A boy grows up in a poor village where his family must always keep silent, never say who they are and never mix with the peasant children, because they will always be the scapegoats.

Aegon 2012 · Shortlist

The Birds of Verhovina

Verhovina madarai

Ádám Bodor · 75 when first published

Novel · 255 pages · Speculative

AIAI-generated summary:In Verhovina, a remote place where the train runs irregularly and the timetable has been abolished, Brigadier Korkodus's foster son waits at the run-down station for a barefoot boy sent over from a reformatory.

Aegon 2012 · Shortlist

Pixel

Pixel

Krisztina Tóth · 44 when first published

Novel · 240 pages · Love

AIAI-generated summary:Chapters that work like pixels, each a whole in itself and each devoted to one part of the body, gradually reveal links between people and couples who collide and meet by chance across time and place.

Aegon 2010 · Shortlist

Autobiographies of an Angel

Egy angyal önéletrajzai

Gábor Schein · 40 when first published

Novel · 234 pages · Historical, Family

AIAI-generated summary:An angel tells two lives far apart in time and place: that of Johann Klarfeld, a German of the eighteenth century, and that of Berta Józsa, born in Hungary in 1943, through four generations of her family.

Aegon 2009 · Shortlist

Seiobo There Below

Seiobo járt odalent

László Krasznahorkai · 54 when first published

Short stories · 451 pages

AIAI-generated summary:Stories ranging across ages and cultures, from biblical times to the present, whose true heroes are works of beauty, made by people or by nature, perfect, purposeless and impossible to resist.

Aegon 2008 · Shortlist

Night School: A Reader for Grownups

Esti iskola

Zsófia Bán · 50 when first published

Short stories · 270 pages · Satire

AIAI-generated summary:A mock textbook for adults whose lessons cover self-help, geography, chemistry and French, among them young Flaubert's journey to Egypt and a last message from the dog Laika before her launch into space.

Aegon 2007 · Shortlist

The Ninth

A kilencedik

Ferenc Barnás · 47 when first published

Novel · 176 pages · Coming of age, Family

AIAI-generated summary:In 1968, in a quiet village outside Budapest, a boy born ninth into a large, poor and devoutly Catholic family grows up under a tyrannical father and a Communist state, knowing hunger and fear.

Aegon 2007 · Shortlist

Barcode

Vonalkód

Krisztina Tóth · 39 when first published

Short stories · 226 pages · Coming of age

AIAI-generated summary:Stories that return to a childhood shaped by the 1970s, when a barcode marked everything that came from the West, and to the fears and reflexes the era left behind: anxiety, exclusion, and still, a childhood that was not all bad.

Also: Warwick Prize 2023 shortlist