At the first evening of the Literarium series in 2015, the Palace of Arts audience once again has the chance to meet a deservedly popular and important writer. In his career and in the broad sweep of his work as a prose writer since he emerged on the scene in the 1990s, Pál Závada has reinterpreted and renewed the tradition of the historical novel in such a natural way that it is as if his background as a sociographer had prepared him for this all along. His unsettling series of novels, which have enthralled literary opinion and the reading public alike (Jadviga párnája, 1997; Milota, 2002; A fényképész utókora, 2004; Idegen testünk, 2008; Természetes fény, 2014), highlight the still unspoken traumas of Hungarian history and the East-Central European region through captivating stories of fate that span generations and national boundaries, told with uncompromising visual power. At the same time, Závada’s sweeping epics create unforgettable flesh-and-blood characters, and it is in no small part due to these moving and engrossing personal life stories that his historical tableaux spring authentically to life. An encounter with a writer able to tell a story in this manner promises to be memorable in itself, but the presence of Gábor Presser and actors Kata Pető and Károly Hajduk from the Szputnyik Company as guest artists guarantees that it will be even more so.

Presented by: Palace of Arts