(b.1947) worked as an academic editor in Hungary in the 1970s. Alongside a number of translations of historical works, he has translated a four novels by Imre Kertész: Fatelessness, New York: Knopf 2004 (awarded PEN American Center’s PEN/Book-of-the-Month Club Translation Prize 2005); Liquidation, New York: Knopf 2004; and, Kaddish for an Unborn Child, New York: Vintage Books 2004; and Detective Story (London: Harvill Secker). He has also contributed to an number of anthologies including Leopard V. An Island of Sound: Hungarian Poetry and Fiction before and beyond the Iron Curtain, eds. George Szirtes and Miklós Vajda. London: Harvill Press 2004; and Hide and Seek: Contemporary Hungarian Literature, eds. Györgyi Horváth & Anna Benedek. Budapest: József Attila Kör 2004.
This month sees the English publication of Imre Kértesz’s little-known novella “Detective Story”. Kértesz’s translator Tim Wilkinson introduces the work and, placing it in the context of Kértesz’s oeuvre, embarks on some detective work of his own.