Short stories
Suppressed passions, ready to erupt like a volcano, humiliation, and quiet hopelessness, written in a dream-like yet precise prose. In Bodor’s stories, there are no false tones or super f luous sentences and adjectives. Everything is in place, and mercilessly so. This is a mysterious world, hidden under our threshold, yet all too familiar and real. Bodor’s characters and scenes are alive: with a few words or sentences, this author gives a staggeringly authentic picture about almost anything: love, misery, human gestures and inhumanity. This collection of Bodor’s stories proves that Bodor is an outstanding figure of contemporary literature.
Product details
ISBN 978 963 14 3328 9
2015, hard cover with jacket
416 pages, 115×187 mm
3490 HUF
Rights sold
English, Polygon (selection)
Spanish, Acantilado
Polish, Czarne
Romanian, Kriterion (selection)
Czech, Dauphin
German, Secession
Bodor’s novel takes place in a village in the Carpathian Mountains. Situated in the centre of Europe, this godforsaken village is surrounded by piles of garbage that give off a sickening stench. In the middle of the village, there is a penal colony for real and alleged consumptive patients – a reservation within a reservation where acts of senseless cruelty and tender love are committed, reported by the narrator in the same matter-of-fact tone. It seems that the village has recently undergone a change of regime: the feared overlords of Bogdanski Dolina, the mountain riflemen have been replaced by priests – though rumour has it that those are in fact colonels and army officers in disguise. In any case, the locals are now waiting for the visit of the archbishop.
Home to nine hot springs, Verhovina used to be rich in natural beauty yet it has become a waste land, with only a few dozen inhabitants left. Trains to Verhovina are scarce; the timetable was cancelled. One day, even the birds disappeared from the region. The village has virtually lost contact with the outside world, though it seems to depend on some faceless, invisible power whose arrival always spells mysterious disappearance and violent death.
was born in Kolozsvár (today Cluj, Romania) in 1936. He was convicted as a political criminal at the age of 16, and spent the years 1952–54 in prison. His first book (The Witness) was published in 1969 in Romania, while in Hungary his debut piece was a collection of short stories entitled A High Mountain Pass (1980). He has been living in Hungary since the early 1980s; for a time, he was editor at Magvető Publishing. In the 1990s he became familiar to the wider reading public after the publication of his novels Sinistra Zone (1992), The Visit of the Archbishop (1999), the most comprehensive collection of his short stories to date, Back to the Long-eared Owl (1997), as well as a confessional, autobiographical piece which was eventually given an interview form (The Smell of Prison, 2000). Bodor’s books have been published in more than twenty languages. Several of his works were made into films, including Zoltán Kamondi’s Dolina, based on The Visit of the Archbishop.
was born in Rio de Janeiro in 1957 and grew up in Brazil and Hungary. A writer, essayist and critic, she made her fiction debut in 2007 with Esti iskola – Olvasókönyv felnőtteknek (Night School: A Reader for Grownups – published in German by Suhrkamp Verlag). Her stories have been widely anthologized. Her work as an essayist, fiction writer, and critic has been awarded several prizes.
Magvető Rights 
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