Imre Kertész

Steven Totosy de Zepetnek (Purdue University)

The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 1.8.2: Hungarian Writing and Culture.
Vol. editors: John Cox (University of North Dakota), Virginia L. Lewis ()

Dates

Born 9 Nov 1929
Died 31 Mar 2016
Activity 1960-2016

Places

Born in Hungary
Active in Hungary

Cultural Identities

Jewish European

Activities

Primary

Novelist

Resources

Imre Kertész received the Nobel Prize in Literature for 2002. The Swedish Academy’s choice came as a surprise to many and in various ways the general public, critics, and scholars were taken unawares. In particular, the English-speaking world knew little to nothing about Kertész’s work at the time, and even now, after his death in 2016, he is far from being a household name.

Kertész was born in on November 9^th 1929 in Budapest into a secularized middle-class Hungarian Jewish family. His parents were László (1900-?), whose father Adolf (1863-1928) changed his surname from Klein in 1916, and Aranka Jakab (1902-1991). His parents divorced in 1936. Although in some of his …

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2250 words

Citation: Totosy de Zepetnek, Steven. "Imre Kertész". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 10 January 2008; last revised 15 June 2018. [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=11921, accessed 22 November 2024.]

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