SÁNDOR TAR: Our Street

Novel

Sándor Tar’s novel takes place in a village in post-1989 Hungary. Though the place is clearly identifiable as a Hungarian village, and the time as the decades following the hopeful and happy years of the regime change when hurried and corrupt privatization led to the increased deprivation of many, the inhabitants of Crooked Street are the eternal insulted and injured. Yet Our Street is far from being a drab sociographic novel. Written with an irresistible sense of humour, empathy and a keen eye for detail, these minimalistic stories portray wasted lives with rare beauty. Alcoholics, unemployed and handicapped people, pensioners, Tar’s “protagonists are characterized by a sense of intertwined ridiculousness and tragedy that marked the fates of Charles and Emma Bovary.” (László Szabolcs, The Quarterly Conversation)

Tar once described sociography as a genre that too often becomes an ‘exotic travelogue read by white people in grave shudder.’ His efforts not to color his portraits with drama or irony is what keeps the otherwise nearly proverbially Eastern European stories of aggression, alcohol, and self-reflection realistic.” (Diána Vonnák, Visegrad Insight)

Eastern Europe after the regime change–the losers of democracy

Sándor Tar never left the place that his fellow-writers gradually abandoned. He is someone who still knows why the pub suddenly falls silent.” (Ádám Bodor)

Product details
ISBN 978 963 14 3597 9
2017 (first edition: 1995, hard cover), paperback
248 pages, 90 × 145 mm
1999 HUF

Rights sold:
English (USA and Canada), Contra Mundum
Macedonian, Antolog

Sándor Tar