Berlin-Hamlet

“[Borbély’s] poetry is epoch-making.” —Péter Nádas

“Berlin-Hamlet is a rich tapestry of ‘subjective’, ‘pseudo-subjective’ and ‘meditative’ texts, all related to present-day Berlin, though tinged with memories of more sinister places like Wannsee, where the decision about the systematic extermination of European Jews was taken by Nazi bureaucrats in 1942.” —World Literature Today

“[Borbély] is considered one of the most important figures in contemporary Hungarian literature, having had an immense impact on the transformation of Hungarian poetry in the last decade, strongly influencing the conceptualization of poetry’s social role and linguistic-thematic possibilities…Borbély’s poetry, prose, and essays try to bring the readers closer to the lives of those who cannot speak of their trauma or suffering. They can be uneducated and poor villagers, survivors of the Holocaust, women grieving after a miscarriage, or victims of terrible aggression. Through Borbély’s texts we readers become increasingly less cruel-hearted.” —László Bedecs, Asymptote

Szilard Borbely (1963-2014) was born in Fehergyarmat in eastern Hungary and studied Hungarian philology and literature at the University of Debrecen, where he later taught. An authority on Hungarian literature of the late-Baroque period as well as a writer, Borbely was awarded several literary prizes, including the prestigious Palladium Prize in 2005. His first major critical success was his third book, Hosszo nap el (Long Day Away, 1993), praised by such writers as Peter Esterhazy and Peter Nadas. His verse collections Halotti pompa- Szekvenciak (Final Matters- Sequences, 2004) and his novel, Nincstelenek (The Dispossessed, 2013), are considered among the most important Hungarian works of literature of the early millennium. His poems have appeared in English in The American Reader, Asymptote, and Poetry. Berlin-Hamlet is his first full collection to be published in English.

Ottilie Mulzet received the Best Translated Book Award in 2014 for her translation of Laszl Krasznahorkai’s Seiobo There Below. Other translations include Borbely’s The Dispossessed and Gabor Schein’s Lazarus.

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