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Articles published in Eurozine
Sarajevo retro, or The Orient in the Occident
Bosnian Muslims, Bosniaks, or "Turks" are, despite their European origins, considered "foreign": how else can their demonization during the last war be explained? [Hungarian version added] [more]
Archipelago Europe
Instead of two homogeneous European regions -- "the East" and "the West" -- there are now fragments, enclaves, and islands. From Baden-Baden to Bucharest, Majorca to Moscow, Karl Schlögel experiences Europe as a series of spaces both distinct and connected. [Hungarian version added] [more]
Memories and histories: The new Spanish Civil War
The pact of silence that has existed in Spain over the Civil War and Franco era is becoming increasingly difficult to maintain. A boom in publications on the subject seems to bear out Manuel Azańa's comment that "burying the dead is a Spanish national pastime". [Hungarian version added] [more]
The patriarch of Muscovite conceptualism
On the death of Russian artist Dimitri Prigov
The Russian artist and writer Dimitri Prigov is dead. Erich Klein, his friend and German translator, remembers one of the most important poets of the late and post-Soviet era. [Hungarian version added] [more]
Reasons for the current upsurge in memory
Over the past quarter century, social structures have undergone a sea change in their traditional relationship to the past. Pierre Nora examines the roots and causes of "memorialism". [Hungarian and Lithuanian versions added] [more]
Buried feelings
German authors' handling of the Allied bombing in World War II
W.G. Sebald claimed that the Allied bombing was hushed up in postwar German literature. Not entirely true, responds Volker Hage: there are a number of novels outside the canon in which the experience of the bombing comes to light. [Hungarian version added] [more]
The kid
"The kids of the divorced repeat the divorce, the kids of the quarrelsome repeat the quarrels, so that everything can go on in the same unbearable fashion that people have become accustomed to for thousands of years..." In blackly comic vein, Hungarian playwright and poet János Háy narrates a web of dysfunctional loves and lives in town and country. [more]
A box of photos
(Captions on the back)
A man looks at photographs of his youth in pre-war Budapest. Above all he remembers his love, the seductive Jolika. Yet memory is tainted by sorrow as it becomes clear that this is a story of loss and displacement. [more]
The scream of geometry
(modified excerpts)
"How can these cities, villages, and their people exist? How can they stand there selling tomatoes and speaking their language and drying their laundry without considering the infinite number of other places where someone else is standing, selling tomatoes or potatoes and speaking their language and drying laundry?" [Hungarian version added] [more]
The presence of African literature
The evolution of literary criticism, publishing, and readership
Africa’s growing role in western European culture is reflected in the increasing interest in its literature. Soon Kourouma will be shelved between Kafka and Kundera. [Hungarian version added] [more]
Zehuze
A Hungarian-Israeli mother addresses her daughter in Europe in a letter she never sends. In a fictional monologue, András Forgách explores the private suffering and political ambivalence of a life in postwar Israel. One of Hungary's most interesting authors for the first time in English translation. [more]
Stalemate in Mexico
On a divided country and its discontented Left
In December 2006, Felipe Calderón was sworn in as Mexico's new conservative president. But with accusations of electoral fraud hanging over him, Calderón is the least-supported president in Mexico's history. [Hungarian version added] [more]
Letter from Ljubljana
The editor of the Slovenian edition of "Le Monde diplomatique" finds that no news is not necessarily good news in a country afflicted by "lethargic hedonism". [Hungarian version added] [more]
Ruin: A history of commonism
An excerpt
A bitter meditation on the legacy of the Soviet regime and the impossibility of adequately remembering the scale of its brutality. [more]
1956
An excerpt
On 23 October 1956, the author was almost shot twice... Before he'd even been born. [more]
Migrant or multicultural literature in the Nordic countries
Over the last three decades, authors with migrant backgrounds have been challenging and expanding the Nordic national literary canons. A review of "migrant literature" in Sweden, Denmark, and Norway. [more]
Necessary lies
Fabricated identities have become a valuable commodity for asylum seekers for whom credibility is the bottom line. Meanwhile, the media adds to the climate of disinformation. [more]
London is not Paris
The British model: Practical, durable, but by far not ideal
The British multicultural model could lead French republicanism out of its impasse, demonstrated by the rioting in November 2005. [more]
The navel of the world
"What does he know of Europe who only Europe knows?" said Rudyard Kipling. A plea for looking beyond the borders of fatherland and mother tongue. [more]
My heart belongs to Europe. Therefore it is broken
Does literature help maintain individual and collective identity, or does it inspire us to discredit it? [more]
A witness of the first century
An interview with György Spiró
The author of Captivity, a reconstruction of the period from around the death of Christ until the Jewish War, on why he needed 800 pages to finish his story; why he imagined Jesus as a chubby, fortyish guy; and why people can no longer read the Iliad. [more]
The history textbooks controversy in Romania
Five years on
The Romanian history textbooks that came out in 1999 reflecting EU values of cultural diversity earned fierce criticism from establishment historians. Why was it not possible at the time to discuss the issue with professional objectivity? [more]
My Scandinavia (VII)
Lithuanian novelist and playwright Marius Ivaskevicius is highly rated in the Baltic States, Poland, and Hungary for his humorous observations of contemporary life. Now Eurozine publishes, in English translation, his seven-part Scandinavian travelogue. In part VI, Ivaskevicius became the northernmost European. This week, fighting the urge to push even further north, he turns back, and, trying to discern the essence of Scandinavia, walks headfirst into a blizzard. His journey, and our story, ends here. [more]
"Culture" instead of "Society"?
The contemporary debate in historiography
In the 1980s, if historians wanted to read about the history of emotions, for example, they had to go to a French theologian; today, the topic is treated from within the discipline. Evaluating the "cultural turn" in historiography. [more]
My Scandinavia (VI)
Lithuanian novelist and playwright Marius Ivaskevicius is highly rated in the Baltic States, Poland, and Hungary for his humorous observations of contemporary life. Now Eurozine publishes, in English translation, his seven-part Scandinavian travelogue. In part V, Ivaskevicius entered Christmas card heaven in northern Norway. But the journey doesn't end there. This week, facing off stiff competition, he finally becomes the northernmost European. [more]
My Scandinavia (V)
Lithuanian novelist and playwright Marius Ivaskevicius is highly rated in the Baltic States, Poland, and Hungary for his humorous observations of contemporary life. Now Eurozine publishes, in English translation, his seven-part Scandinavian travelogue. In part IV, Ivaskevicius reached the edge of the Arctic Circle. Now he presses on to Lake Inar and enters Christmas card heaven. Then it's west into Norway to meet the Sami people -- if only someone would point them out to him... [more]
My Scandinavia (IV)
Lithuanian novelist and playwright Marius Ivaskevicius is highly rated in the Baltic States, Poland, and Hungary for his humorous observations of contemporary life. Now Eurozine publishes, in English translation, his seven-part Scandinavian travelogue. In part four he journeys to the north of Finland, stopping off at the middle of nowhere before pressing on to the edge of the Arctic Circle. [more]
Voyage to Brno
An archeology of the inter-war modern
Central eastern European modernism in the 1930s was an aesthetic declaration of war on the style of the defeated empires. With the resurgence of "civil Europe" after 1989, the White Modern has renewed significance. [more]
My Scandinavia (III)
Lithuanian novelist and playwright Marius Ivaskevicius is highly rated in the Baltic States, Poland, and Hungary for his humorous observations of contemporary life. Now Eurozine publishes, in English translation, his seven-part Scandinavian travelogue. Here, he looks to Finland, like Lithuania a nation with a history of embattled independence. Over a round of drinks he discovers that's not all the Lithuanians and the Finns have in common. [more]
My Scandinavia (II)
Lithuanian novelist and playwright Marius Ivaskevicius is highly popular in the Baltic States, Poland, and Hungary for his humorous observations of contemporary life. Now Eurozine publishes, in English translation, his seven-part Scandinavian travelogue. Here, he remembers his first trip to Sweden, where he learned the meaning of an honest day's work and fell in love with a blonde in an Opel. And how different Sweden seemed when he returned ten years later as a writer. [more]
My Scandinavia (I)
Lithuanian novelist and playwright Marius Ivaskevicius is highly rated in the Baltic States, Poland, and Hungary for his humorous observations of contemporary life. Now Eurozine publishes, in English translation, his seven-part Scandinavian travelogue. [more]
Annäherungen an Budapest
Briefe an Freunde und Freundinnen in Deutschland und den USA
For a German historian posted at the Central European University in Budapest, public transport announcements are just one obstacle in getting to know Hungarian culture. [more]
Ein heimatloser Lokalpatriot
Betrachtungen über Novi Sad und Serbien vor und nach den Balkan Kriegen. [more]
Milota tells of the Kuhajda Family and of the Poppies
Pál Záveda tells a story of poppy seeds, beauty, and lost love. [more]
Discours de Milota au Sujet des Transports
Extracts from the novel