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Born in 1971 in Gyula, Csősz is an internationally acclaimed specialist of biological diversity. Ants are his main research field, and he has discovered nearly 70 hitherto unknown species in Europe and the Tropics during his work.

Aliens of Earth

The complex social world of ants has fascinated people since prehistoric times. Though comparisons are often drawn between the world of ants and humans, nothing could be further from the truth: defined by a rigid caste system, ants are anonymous, and like pre-programmed creatures they trawl preordained path till the end of their days. Misunderstanding their motivations is what makes ant society so difficult to fathom. Investigating ants on any individual level is irrelevant when it is the colony itself that acts as an intelligent, living, growing, thinking and decision-making superorganism.

This superorganism had conquered Earth’s land-based ecosystem tens of millions of years ago, and though this might be news to the planet’s upstart lords, the humans, ants still hold sway over the microcosm. Studying the world of ants uncovers the next step in evolution, that of the superorganism, where individuals are an integral part of the community and unable to survive separately.

Aliens of Earth offers us a view of colony life, the basics of ant language, and the secret way virgin queens recognize their time for the nuptial flight; as well as a cast of slave-keeping, thieving and drug-dealing ants.

Sándor Csősz offers an informative read to the general public. His book presents the latest in research and theory, tempered to be palatable to anyone without a background in biology.

Synopsis available

A fascinating book on ants, the lords of the microcosm

Product details
Publisher: Athenaeum
ISBN 978 963 29 3923 0
2019, hardback
208 pages, 4999 HUF

Sándor Csősz

 

A Family History in Four Movements

Csaba Iglódi’s family novel spans two centuries and four generations of the Dreher beer brewing dynasty. The story is set between the early 1800s and 1946, and focuses on four men – four fathers and managers. The Founder journeys from the Black Forest region to Vienna, and formulates Viennese lager beer there. He is followed in line by the Beer King, whose heir to the frothy throne is an Innovator who turns out to be the penultimate manager, followed by a Consolidator who, through no fault of his own, loses out.

Dreher Symphony is on the one hand a business novel, whose author has a solid background in management, narrating a booming business empire’s history with access to relevant archival materials as well as his own experience. On the other hand, it is also a gripping family saga, set against a tapestry of Napoleonic wars. 19th century revolutions, a brief but profitable period of peace, and finally, two subsequent world wars.

This book brings to life 19th century Vienna and Budapest, though as a wandering protagonist’s apprentice we are even transported to England at the height of the industrial revolution. The actual Dreher empire extended to four countries of today: Vienna and Trieste, as well as Michelob in Czechia and Steinbruch, now known as the Kőbánya district in Budapest. The Dreher Symphony’s finale ends up in Hungary, post-World War II, where Jenő Dreher’s company, ranking highest in taxed revenue, is abruptly nationalized by the Communist state – a typical end note for an East-European business saga.

Dreher Symphony is a tribute to the magic triangle of talent, perseverance and sheer good luck, to tradition and innovation, and of course to women, in that long-gone world of men.

Two centuries and four generations of the Dreher beer brewing dynasty

Libri Prize for bestselling debut novel in 2023
Shortlisted for the Margó Prize 2023

Product details
Publisher: Athenaeum
ISBN 978 963 54 3268 4
2023, hardback
432 pages, 6990 HUF

Csaba Iglódi

In the summer of 1936, a young engineer from Bucharest arrives in a small town in Transylvania, promising to repair their busted turbine for the waterworks. Máté Kalagor is a man of ambiguous identity – Hungarian or Romanian? –known also as Matei Călugăru, and despite his best intentions has a hard time settling down. His tale is also that of 1930’s rural Tranylvania, a politically and ethnically diverse scene peopled by Romanians, Hungarians, Jews, Germans, Armenians –homestead owners, industrialists and intellectuals. As the title hints, this is truly a place belonging both to everyone and no one.

Then history tramples all over this enclave: royalist Romania, the antisemitic and anti-Hungarian Iron Guard, World War II, Soviet invasion. And if these weren’t enough, there’s an even deeper mystery to baffle an engineer: love. Kalagor gets married, meanwhile keeping up an affair with an older woman, and every so often he’s visited by a childhood love, Endza, the adventurous Armenian beauty.

Following the runaway success of his previous novel Story of a Stammer, Gábor Vida picks another unusual vantage point, not without irony, to describe resemblance and differences in a peculiarly 20th century Central-Eastern European story, halfway Hungarian and halfway Romanian, but as the subtitle fittingly suggests: Transylvanian through and through.

“A City for All and None is the story of people faced with perpetual change, whose lives are continually disrupted by history and who are thus incapable of directing their own fate.” (Orsolya Kolozsi, Könyves Magazin)

“It is easy being an ungrateful posterity, because we know not only what the old tales’ characters didn’t know, but also what we would advise them to do.”

Product details
ISBN 978 963 14 4272 2
2023, hardback
424 pages, 5999 HUF

Gábor Vida

 

A new collection from Krisztina Tóth, To Get a Glimpse of Sky includes her most recent short stories. Bringing out her full repertoire, these writings are a mixed bag: some elegaic, others surreal, even bordering on the grotesquely weird, and all adding up to a detailed diagnosis of the world around us. Even the most trivial situations are snapped into drama by unforeseeable events and encounters that elicit pain, suppressed desires, grief and loss.

Characters in Krisztina Tóth’s stories do their best to keep their lives going, doing their shopping, going to work, taking care of business; yet their everyday routines get disrupted by the turbulence of human relationships and their resurfacing past, exposing their vulnerabilities. The story of a ruined marriage is told through a cycle of plastic food packagings. A grandmother takes her grandchild for the holidays, and meets another vacationer prompting her to confront her yearnings for a better life. An ordinary guy suddenly dies from Covid, only to be exposed posthumously as a pedophile.

Tóth is a master of the short story; she is insightful, witty, and a shrewd observer, undoubtedly one of the best authors of her generation.

Snapshots of our present world from a Hungarian master of the short story

Product details
ISBN 978 963 14 4273 1
2023, hardback
160 pages, 3999 HUF

Krisztina Tóth