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Seller's Description:
Used-Very Good. VG hardback in VG dust jacket. 1982 publication-two novellas translated from Hungarian; tightly bound in red cloth with silver lettering to spine. Dust jacket not price-clipped; slight wear. Tiny mark on page fore-edge; otherwise, a clean, tidy copy.
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Seller's Description:
New York. 1982. New Directions. 1st American Edition. Very Good in Slightly Worn Dustjacket. 0811208362. Translated from the Hungarian by Michael Henry Heim & Claea Gyorgyey. 163 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by Denise Breslin. keywords: Literature Translated Hungary Eastern Europe. FROM THE PUBLISHER-The Flower Show and The Toth Family, two novellas in one volume by Istvän Örkény (1912-79), introduce to an English-speaking audience a Hungarian writer with a keen sense of the absurdities of modern life. In the '60s and '70s, Örkénys vein of black comedy earned him the epithet 'master of the grotesque for the popular dramatizaions of these and other novels. The Flower Show (1977) is Örkénys last novel and his most widely translated work of fiction. With consummate irony, the author exploits our universal unease in the face of death, the desire to star taken to its ultimate absurdity by playing the lead in one's own demise, and tie voyeurism of the modern media. In The Toth Family (1967) a mad army major on leave terrorizes a village fireman and his family, forcing them to cut and fold endless quantities of cardboard packing boxes every night until dawn. Originally written as a filmscript, the novel's scenes flicker past in lunatic array as Örkény satirizes Hungary of the early '40s and the acquiescence of a quasi-feudal, nationalistic, caste-ridden society to the authoritarian state of Nazi Germany. The impression is as if the Marx Brothers had been born out of Dr. Strangelove. The translation of The Toth Family is by Clara Gyorgyey, president of the American branch of the Centre for Writers in Exile of International PEN. Michael Henry Heim of U.C. LA. translated The Flower Show and, in addition, has provided an informative introduction. inventory #5956.
