JS Lecture Series: Gábor T. Szántó: In Twofold Minority - Does Modern European Jewish Literature exist?
THE CENTRAL EUROPEAN UNIVERSITY
JEWISH STUDIES PROGRAM
cordially invites you to a lecture by
Gábor T. Szántó
Novelist, poet, editor-in-chief of Szombat magazine
In Twofold Minority
Does Modern European Jewish Literature exist?
“Of course, there are more than pure aesthetic differences behind the debate about whether European and American Jewish literature exists or not. Overseas, where the trauma of mass persecution did not follow Jewish assimilation, it seems to be easier to write about Jewish issues and to discuss Jewish literature today. The US, unlike Europe, had never become a great Jewish cemetery. Trauma has been, and continues to be blocking the freedom of reflection in Europe.”
Tuesday, November 26 at 6 p.m.
In Nádor 11 TIGY Room
Gábor T. Szántó (1966) is a novelist, poet, and essayist. Szántó lives in Budapest and belongs to the third generation of postwar Hungarian Jewish writers. Szántó has a degree in political science and jurisprudence from Eötvös Loránd University. He is the editor-in-chief of the Hungarian Jewish political and cultural monthly Szombat (www.szombat.org), founded in 1989. Since 2008 he has been teaching Modern Jewish Literature in university and open university context. He published his first volume of stories, A tizedik ember (The Tenth Man), in 1995. A volume of two novellas, Mószer (The Informer) appeared in 1997. Szántó has published a novel in 2003: Keleti pályadvar, végállomas (Eastern Station, Last Stop). His second short story book Lágermikulás (The Crunch of Empty Boots) was published in 2004 followed by a collection of poems A szabadulás íze (The Taste of Escape) in 2010. His novel Édeshármas (Threesome) appeared in 2012 and his forthcoming novel is K, avagy a nyomozás (K, or the investigation).His novella (Mószer) appeared in German as In Schuld verstrickt (Edition Q, 1999). A volume of short stories (Обратный билет – Obratnij Bilet) came out in Russian at Text Publisher, 2008. His short stories and essays have been translated to several languages. In 2003 one of his short stories was selected into the anthology Contemporary Jewish Writing in Hungary (University of Nebraska Press). In 2012 his poems were published in the anthology “I lived on this Earth...” Hungarian Poets on the Holocaust (Alba Press, London), and his writing was anthologized in the contemporary volume of The Posen Library of Jewish Culture and Civilization (Yale University Press).
A reception will follow