“I saw ice and hail, spoke-wheeled horse-drawn carriages on the street, I was in a tobacco kiosk, in building yards, I made telephone calls with pennies, I stood alongside children in pubs which had been opened in the twenties, I went to courtyards where time had stood still since the 1830s, I saw faces, wrinkles, guardians in motion, eyes, colours, sounds.” This passage faithfully reproduces the historian’s path, the beginning of the researcher’s journey into the modern society and cultural history of the Hungarian Jews, which since the 1990s has seen the publication of some outstanding short stories collections (Three Fingers of an Elderly Lady on My Shoulder, Anderson’s Tactics, On Bécsi Street) showcasing the author Gyula Zeke’s literary sensibility. Stopped time and a slowed-down existence, the patient contemplation of the writer, his love of Budapest, of the city’s countless twists and turns, his necessary knowledge of bygone eras condemned to destruction, its passionate recorder. For decades he has also shown a special affection and close ties with the Budapest coffeehouse culture, both its past and present. In a collaboration with Frankl Aliona, Café Guide (2005) describes far more coffee houses than you would find in your usual guidebook. Critics full of praise asserted that it would be impossible to contemplate writing the 20th Century history of Budapest without first reading this account of the capital’s relationship with espressos and the metaphysical and erotic connotations of coffee-drinking found in the detailed study Mine Was a Black One (2015): “Zeke brings together the rise and fall of Budapest coffee with such care, thoroughness and empathy that the reader is almost there, sitting on a small plastic chair amid puddles of water dripping from hanging, heavy overcoats.”
“Form and respect for tradition, disbelief and sacredness,” said Zeke in an interview, as a kind of personal, metaphysical summary of his work, a possible motto for the special excitement this evening will bring.

Presented by: Müpa Budapest