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Three connected short novels, each about a poet cast out of the world: Mihály Babits in Szeged, Mór Jókai hiding after the defeat of the revolution, and György Bessenyei in his birthplace, Tiszabercel, amid the emptiness of the Hungarian countryside. All three are hermits, abandoned and lost, and all three are preparing for something grand, an extraordinary feat in which they would come into their own; each time, what is at stake is an exceptional moment in Hungarian literature. Dense and lyrical, describing objects and nature with a scientist's precision, the book is also a kind of minimalist encyclopedia that now and then opens onto wide panoramas. It is about solitude as refuge, as punishment or as a strange burden of fate, and about genius slowly unfolding its heavy layers.

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About the book

Form

Novel

Length

292 pages in the original

Genres

Historical (assigned by AI)

Set in

Hungary

First published

2016 by Magvető

Author's age

52 when first published

ISBN

9789631434354 (original)