The Modern Novel

Biography

Gore Vidal has complained that American readers will enthuse over a European post-modern novel but ignore an American writer producing something similar. He may well have had the likes of Péter Esterházy in mind. Esterházy was descended from one of Hungary’s most aristocratic families. The family was the patron of the composer Haydn and Esterházy’s grandfather was Prime Minister of Hungary. However, by the time he was born in 1950, his family were class enemies. He studied mathematics at the University of Budapest and then worked as a computer systems operator, which he used as a basis for his first novel Termelési-regény. Kisssregény (A Novel of Production), which had considerable success, not least because it subverted the traditional Soviet-style workplace novel. He has gone on to write several more post-modernist novels. He died in 2016.

Other links

Péter Esterházy
Péter Esterházy
Honoring a European Troublemaker
Interview