In search of a usable past

Who were the ancestors of the Polish middle class?

As the new Polish middle class seeks to establish its own identity and to break with the traditional ethos of the central European intelligentsia, it may draw on the experience of merchants once based in the Polish sector of the Russian empire. [Hungarian version added] [more]

Farmers in fairy-tale land

Poland and the European crisis

Lack of political decision-making and the demise of objectivism have landed Europe where it is today, argues Marcin Król. A lesson could be learned from Poland, whose tradition of economic liberalism and rural pragmatism has enabled the country to weather the crisis. [Hungarian version added] [more]

Balancing the books

Sixty years and more since the end of WWII, eastern European experiences of subjugation are often glossed over. This creates misunderstandings that could be avoided by an awareness of a common European history. Then, solidarity rather than national prejudice would motivate public opinion on matters of European politics. [more]

After the velvet divorce

Differences between the Czech and Slovak national cultures begin with language and range from newspaper circulation to attitudes to corruption. Yet they don't justify seeing the Czecho-Slovak split as blueprint for dismantling the EU, writes Martin Simecka. [Hungarian version added] [more]

The tune of the future

Italy: old Europe, new Europe, changing Europe

Venice versus Lampedusa: travelling around Italy, Slavenka Drakulic observes one kind of Europe being replaced by another. Instead of attempting to conserve the cultural past, we should accept that migration will adapt much of what we consider "European" to its own image. [Hungarian version added] [more]

A beautifying lie?

Culture and kitsch @ London2012

The opening ceremony of the London Olympics, themed "The Isle of Wonders", will offer a pastiche of national identity in which the darker sides of the British psyche are lost in a multiculturalist high-kitsch spectacular, anticipates Phil Cohen.[Hungarian version added] [more]

Splitting up?

The re-nationalization of Europe

Perceived loss of sovereignty and rising hostility towards migrants are behind the nationalist revival in many EU member states. Yet in the countries of the former USSR, nationalism is associated with democratization. Can one talk in the same terms about contemporary nationalism in East and West? [Hungarian version added] [more]

Ideology never ends

An interview with sociologist Daniel Chirot

While some eastern European countries have shaken off the "post-communist" tag, in others it remains apt, says Daniel Chirot. Meanwhile, new disparities are generating a leftwing revival in the region that show pronouncements of the end of ideology to have been rash.[Hungarian version added] [more]

Get smart

Ireland and the euro crisis

Ireland, like other small EU member-states, must be especially smart in responding to the euro crisis, since it does not command the resources that better enable larger states to protect their interests. How coherent has the Irish approach been so far and are the alternatives more convincing? [Hungarian version added] [more]

The politics of no alternatives

An interview with Gleb Pavlovsky

Gleb Pavlovsky, erstwhile political advisor to Vladimir Putin, whose election campaigns he masterminded in 2000 and 2004, talks to "Transit" about the workings of power in the Soviet Union and in post-Soviet Russia. [Hungarian version added] [more]

Greece: The history behind the collapse

Greece's economic crisis has its roots in a political pact dating back to the foundation of the modern state, writes Georges Prévélakis. The threat posed to Europe by the Greek breakdown is less contagion than a wave of anti-western feeling that could exacerbate geopolitical instabilities. [Hungarian version added] [more]

Democratic, can travel

The Russian regime's abandonment of the ideology of public interest prevents it being measured against its own standards, while its policy of open borders diffuses protest from a dissatisfied middle class. Ivan Krastev on reasons for authoritarianism's tenacity. [Hungarian version added] [more]

Is Belgium the test-bench for democracy 2.0?

Surreal rearguard state or foretaste of problems yet to come? David Van Reybrouck predicts that the underlying causes of Belgium's political crisis will repeat themselves throughout Europe as the new media call into question established democratic practices. [Hungarian version added] [more]

Talking about my generation

The recession has returned a generation of Spaniards to a cruel reality: that they may have to live with less than their parents did. Whether they alter their expectations or try to stop the clock will be decisive, writes "Letras Libres" editor Ramón González Férriz. [Hungarian version added] [more]

Soul food

Two recent books on the Armenian cult of the dead function as symbolic materialization of the myth of return among assimilated Hungarian-Armenians and constitute an important act of collective memory-formation among this diaspora community, writes anthropologist Kinga Kali. [more]

How to get into and out of an economic crisis

From Scandinavian democracy to target of British anti-terror laws: the Icelandic saga is well known, but how did the country get itself into such a mess? Andri Snaer Magnason tells of privatizations, overreaching and astronomical pay checks. [more]

The new boundaries of mankind

Modernist humanism, in which individual rights and freedoms are won at the expense of the natural world, is entering into ever greater tension with the new emphasis on interconnectedness. Sverker Sörlin on the scientific renegotiation of concepts of humanity and nature. [more]

Literary perspectives: Sweden

Beyond crime fiction, handbags and designer suits

Recent literary debates in Sweden have dwelled, among things, on authors' love lives and penchant for designer handbags. Yet there is more out there if one looks: Hans Koppel's satire of suburban manners, for example, or Magnus Hedlund's explorations of human perception. [more]

A pluralist democracy

The democracies of today can remain democracies only if they are able to negotiate pluralism and communality, conflict and justice, rationality and identity. Federation is a possible response to this challenge, writes Göran Rosenberg. [more]

European waistlines

Swedish poet Ida Börjel confronts us with our favourite and most insulting national prejudices about ourselves and our European neighbours. But does she confirm them? [more]

Not just to build

Recovering architecture in Central Europe

In eastern central Europe, the neoliberal "regime architecture" favoured by non-state actors is copied by the public sector, resulting in buildings with no representative function. To counter this trend, architects must serve as ambassadors of architecture and quality space. [more]

Earlobe, or The millstones of ideology

Conflict and resolution in literature

Today's literary and political climate in Hungary reminds László Garaczi of the communist 1980s. In an atmosphere compulsively and perversely imbued with politics, it is difficult to speak intelligently about the issues of the community. [more]

The intolerance of the tolerant

The advance of populist anti-Islamic forces in the liberal bastions of northern Europe -- Denmark, the Netherlands and Sweden -- appears to reflect a betrayal of these societies' renowned social tolerance. But there is a more subtle logic at work, says Cas Mudde. [more]

Multiculturalism at its limits?

Managing diversity in the new Europe

Multiculturalism, the default strategy in western Europe for managing cultural diversity, is increasingly under attack from both Right and Left. If multiculturalism has reached its limits, what are the alternatives that can help manage diversity, both in the East and in the West? [more]

Which "multiculturalism" has failed, David Cameron?

The multiculturalism recently attacked by David Cameron bears little in common with the integration policies of previous British governments, writes Cécile Laborde. What it does resemble is a securitization approach that places citizens under suspicion on the basis of their religion. [more]

Monoculturalism is dead: Multiculturalism has yet to come

In Germany, conservatives criticize a pastiche of multiculturalism to justify authoritarian policies and deflect attention from decades of neglect, argues Claus Leggewie. Failure to recognize Muslims as part of society is to risk repeating an historical mistake. [more]

A Merkel attack on multiculturalism

In Germany as in Britain, the consequence of multiculturalist policies was social fragmentation, argues Kenan Malik. But a critique of multiculturalism should not be confused with the current wave of political attacks on immigrants and immigration. [more]

Territory, identity, transformation

A Baltic-Balkan comparison

Lithuania and Bulgaria: subjected to neoliberal forces of disintegration, territorial identities in the regulated zone of market democracy that is new Europe re-pattern along altered lines of conflict. Ivaylo Ditchev and Tomas Kavaliauskas share Baltic-Balkan perspectives on the present. [more]

A voyage towards the "other"

History has a long fuse and memory often betrays the past. For Yudit Kiss, a journey across borders and through no man's lands brings that past alive and reminds us of what we have lost, in particular the diversity of the past and the beauty of the "other". [more]

Literary perspectives: Lithuania

Almost normal

The literary field in Lithuania has established itself since independence, despite vastly smaller print runs. Today, a range of literary approaches can be made out, from the social criticism of the middle generation to the more private narratives of the post-Soviet writers. [more]

Literary perspectives: The Netherlands

"Profound Holland" and the new Dutch

While the work of novelists Jan Siebelink and Arnon Grunberg reflect the new need for security in the Netherlands, a parallel strand of contemporary Dutch literature sidesteps such concerns: writers with migrant backgrounds are introducing new styles into the Dutch literary repertoire. [more]

In praise of hybridity

Cultural globalization is not the transplantation of western ideas and technologies across the planet, but the adaptation of these according to local requirements, writes Ales Debeljak. Hybridity, the product of a longue durée, is at the heart of the western paradigm. [more]

Deutschland: The image of Germans in Polish literature

The figure of the German in recent Polish literature reveals shifts in perspective from the experience of war to that of exile. Representations of the German other in Polish self-imagining. [more]

Dilemma '89: My father was a communist

Two sons of well-known persecuted communists discuss the still unanswered questions surrounding the involvement of their fathers' generation in post-war communism, and the failings of today's debate about the past in the former communist countries. [more]

Repression's capital, Europe's canary

Kafka's home city has a lot to hide, writes James Hawes. The Czech capital's architectural debt to greater Germany; its authoritarian past and history of anti-Semitism; even its most famous son's penchant for pornography -- these unwelcome truths are bad for business. [more]

The rubber-stamp and the cyber-troll

Democracy and media in Hungary today

The Hungarian Right is less interested in the details of the law than in leading a "moral revolution" that threatens to create islands of virtual defiance isolated from an increasingly homogeneous national public sphere, writes Martin Tharp. [more]

"I am not a woman writer"

About women, literature and feminist theory today

In the 1970s and 1980s, many women found the female in literature inspiring; but then Nathalie Sarraute snarled in an interview: "When I write I am neither man nor woman nor dog nor cat." Toril Moi finds that since then the discussion has gone nowhere. [more]

Ode to Joy or The beginning of an ad-hoc transformation

Eighty per cent of eastern Germans could imagine living under a socialist regime if it meant a secure job and mutual solidarity. Andreas Korpás attempts to explain why the perception of socialism has changed so dramatically since 1989. [more]

KP

Peteris Puritis gives an unofficial guided tour of the many Soviet-era monuments in the Latvian town of his childhood, recalling some of the cheeky uses he and his friends found for them... [more]

Streets for walking

An afternoon in Pécs

"The most noticeable similarity between my birthplace and Pécs is the colour: a yellow verging on beige, imperial yellow. Admittedly, it's not an ugly colour. It's neither pleasant nor unpleasant. Home is where it doesn't matter whether it's beautiful or ugly, someone once said." [more]

The four points of the compass

"The pagan women not only sat around without an izar or some other veil to cover their faces, they were not even loathe to shout and quarrel, what's more, they even laughed with their mouths open." A scene from 16th-century Pécs, as described in the novel "Turkish Mirror" by Hungarian author Viktor Horváth. [more]

Sworn virgin

An Albanian girl is caught between the patriarchal cruelty of village life and the communist assault on traditional values. She flees to Tuzla in Bosnia, in the hope of finding the freedom to live as a woman denied her by the custom of "sworn virginity". [more]

Culturalism: Culture as political ideology

The multiculturalism debate has changed the political fronts. The Left defends minority cultures while the Right stands guard over national culture. Both are variants of a culturalist ideology, argue Jens-Martin Eriksen and Frederik Stjernfelt. [more]

The geopolitics of memory

The controversy around the statue of the Soviet soldier in Tallinn in April 2007 provided a striking demonstration that memory politics is less about the communist past than about future political and economic hegemony on the European continent. [more]

Still not free

Why post-'89 history must go beyond self-diagnosis

The dissident generation of the 1970s and 1980s produced a body of work unprecedented in Czech history, says Martin Simecka. Yet it is precisely the monumentality of this generation's legacy that prevents the interpretation of the communist past going beyond self-diagnosis. [more]

Defending freedom

Reflections on 1989

The paradoxical effects of transition make it hard to see what was achieved in '89, writes Adam Michnik. "The workers, with whose help it was possible to win freedom, fell victim to that very freedom." In a "Europe without utopias", cynicism towards democratic values is the biggest danger. [more]

Two stories

Kundera and the conclusion of the Velvet Revolution

The reaction to the Kundera allegations in the Czech Republic has largely been one of doubt rather than blame. Miroslav Balastík wonders whether the incident signifies the end of a phase of post-communism in the Czech Republic. [more]

What are the Czechs like?

"I'm tellin' ya, if a Czechoslovak had been within reach, I'd've licked his ass clean!" A tough-talking Magyar remembers the stirrings of neighbourly affection in '89. [more]

A lesson in the void

"People stare at me, and I can't blame them. Not because I'm someone who has something among those who have nothing, but because I can afford to look to the horizon." [more]

Zinedine Zidane or games of belonging

Zinedine Zidane is a figurehead around which young Muslims in France and Germany form a sense of community. The footballer's style of play is a direct expression of the immigrant experience; even the head-butt had an instructive value. [more]

Cataclysm, anarchy and knitting

US financial experts are talking of cataclysm and anarchy, but what really worries them is nationalization, writes George Blecher. Meanwhile, at street-level, the crisis is having some unusual effects. [more]

France: return to Babel

Resisting the norms of an over-regulated language is absolutely crucial, writes Marc Hatzfeld in a celebration of Babel and the true value of linguistic diversity: creative misunderstandings. [more]

Literary perspectives: Northern Ireland

Shaking the hand of history

While the Northern Irish literary tradition is closely bound up with the experience of sectarian violence, contemporary Northern Irish writing defies the assumption that "the Troubles" are all there is to the country's literature. [more]

Indian time and my father

"If you always want to end up the winner, if you don't know that being in India already means that you are a winner, you lose." Hungarian novelist János Háy on the new global playing field and the "authenticity of penury". [more]

What does it mean, disclosure?

While there are many differences between the Kundera case and those of other eastern European intellectuals revealed as having been informers, its disclosure has followed the usual pattern. Each case must be evaluated on an individual basis, cautions György Dalos. [more]

Going away and getting away

Richard Wagner's dilemma

Romanian-German author Richard Wagner writes of exiles from the former Eastern Bloc who remain alien in their adopted countries yet cannot find their ways back home. György Dalos's laudatio to Wagner on his receipt of the Georg Dehio prize. [more]

The re-transnationalization of literary criticism

Critical discussion of foreign literature serves as a source of information not only for readers but also for the "trade". When that discussion disappears or becomes one-sided, this has consequences for the literary institution as a whole. [more]

Encyclopaedist of the international

Antonin J. Liehm, editor of the Czech magazine Litérarní noviny until 1968 and founder of Lettre Internationale, has been at the forefront of numerous attacks on the "provincialism of major cultures". One theme has persisted throughout: the idea of an international magazine. [more]

Literary perspectives: Austria

Anything but a "German appendix"

Austrian novelists are still referred to as Germans despite recent critical and commercial success. From the new narrative "miracle" to the darkly humorous "writer's novel", Daniela Strigl finds a contemporary Austrian scene at the top of its game. [more]

What is postcolonial thinking?

Postcolonial thinking developed in a transnational, eclectic vein from the very start, says theorist Achille Mbembe. This enabled it to combine the anti-imperialist tradition with the fledgling subaltern studies and a specific take on globalization. [more]

The dialectic of secularization

The opposition between "multiculturalism" and "Enlightenment fundamentalism" is misconceived, argues Jürgen Habermas. "The universalist claim of the political Enlightenment does not contradict the particularist sensibilities of a correctly understood multiculturalism." [more]

Urban asphalt gave flower to utopia

"The eastern European '68ers formed the backbone of the democratic opposition, whereas we, the somewhat older '56ers, only joined in with certain reservations, because we had a closer acquaintance with defeat." György Konrád casts an ironic look at the '68ers. [more]

On the Indian view of things

Adolf Holl in conversation with Sudhir Kakar

Indian pyschoanalyst and author Sudhir Kakar talks about the fluid ego, the female principle in religion, and globalization and religious fundamentalism in India today. [more]

The abolition of poverty

Report from Bombay

Whoever serves in Bombay's city administration and uses the word "slum" simultaneously means "encroachment". The laager mentality of Bombay's rich has led to a social apartheid where slums are cleared to make way -- quite literally -- for golf courses. [more]

May '68: a contested history

Despite the tendency of decennial commemorations to cement the "official version" of May '68, important questions remain unanswered. Chris Reynolds points out some blind spots in the increasingly stereotyped interpretation of the events in France forty years ago. [more]

How I became a Czech and a Slovak

Mykola Riabchuk recalls how the politics of the Prague Spring filtered through to Ukraine until the crackdown on "bourgeois nationalism" five years later; and how, during perestroika, the roles were reversed and he brought banned literature to friends in Czechoslovakia. [more]

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? [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. [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 Azaña's comment that "burying the dead is a Spanish national pastime". [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. [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. [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". [Italian 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?" [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. [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". [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]

The Age of Discovery

The Oceans

[more]

The Age of Discovery

America

.. [more]

Budapest in one day

Kurzer Leitfaden für Budapest

... [more]

Curriculum vitae

.. [more]

The Fort Madison Rodeo

.. [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 by Pál Zavada. [more]