Recommended Books

Many books published by Corvina, a Budapest-based English-language press, are recommended below. They can be purchased at English-language bookstores in Budapest, or you can write for a free catalog: Corvina kiadó, P.O. Box 108, Budapest H-1364, Hungary.

History & Politics -- For an overview of Hungarian history, try László Kontler's A History of Hungary (Palgrave/Macmillan, 2002). Try Amazon.com or ABE.com, but if you can't obtain it before your journey, you can pick one up at the Central European University's bookshop (V. Nádor u. 9-11) in Budapest, where the author happens to be head of the History Department. A History of Hungary (Indiana University Press, 1990), edited by Peter Sugar, is an anthology with a number of good essays. The Habsburg Monarchy, 1809-1918 (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1948), by A. J. P. Taylor, is a lively and readable analysis of the final century of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

The Holocaust in Hungary: An Anthology of Jewish Response (University of Alabama Press, 1982), edited and translated by Andrew Handler, is notable for the editor's excellent introduction. Elenore Lister's Wallenberg: The Man in the Iron Web (Prentice Hall, 1982) recounts the heroic life of Raoul Wallenberg in Nazi-occupied Budapest.

When Angels Fooled the World (University of Wisconsin Press, 2008), by Charles Fenyvesi is an excellent recounting of those who saved Jews during the war.

Memoirs -- Two memoirs of early-20th-century Budapest deserve mention: Apprentice in Budapest: Memories of a World That Is No More (University of Utah Press, 1988) by anthropologist Raphael Patai; and Budapest 1900 (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1989), by John Lukacs, which captures the feeling of a lively but doomed imperial city at the turn of the 20th century. Post-communist Budapest is described in Marion Merrick's Now You See It, Now You Don't; Seven Years in Hungary 1982-89 (Mágus, 1998). Another book of note is In Search of the Mother Book (University of Nebraska Press, 1999), a memoir by the American feminist literary figure Susan Rubin Suleiman, who fled Hungary after World War II and returned to the land of her birth in the late 1980s.

Culture, Cuisine & Wine -- Tekla Domotor's Hungarian Folk Beliefs (Corvina and Indiana University Press, 1981) covers witches, werewolves, giants, and gnomes. Zsuzsanna Ardó's How to Be a European: Go Hungarian (Biográf, 1994) is a witty little guidebook to Hungarian culture, etiquette, and social life.

Julia Szabó's Painting in Nineteenth Century Hungary (Corvina, 1985) contains a fine introductory essay and over 300 plates. In our opinion, the best traveler-oriented coffee-table book available in Budapest is Budapest Art and History (Flow East, 1992), by Delia Meth-Cohn.

Hungary in the Culinaria series (Konemann, 2001) by Aniko Gergely provides an excellent and thorough cultural introduction to Hungarian cooking, in addition to a bunch of authentic recipes. The Cuisine of Hungary (Bonanza Books, 1971), by the famous Hungarian-born restaurateur George Lang, also contains a great deal of material on the subject.

Hungary: Its Fine Wines and Winemakers (Print X Budavar RT, 2007) by David Copp has been given rave reviews by all of the Budapest press.

Fiction -- Not all the best examples of Hungarian literature are available in translation, but Fateless by 2002 Nobel Prize-winner Imre Kertész is a must. You should also look for any translations of highly esteemed contemporary authors Péter Nádas and Péter Esterházy. Of particular interest is Esterházy's Helping Verbs of the Heart (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1991), a gripping story of grief following a parent's death, and Nádas's A Book of Memories (Penguin, 1998), which was assessed by Susan Sontag as the best European novel of the 20th century. You may also want to find and read the following: Gyula Illyés' The People of the Puszta (Corvina, 1979), an unabashedly honest look at peasant life in the early 20th century; The Tragedy of Man (1862) is a Magyar classic, by Imre Madách; István Örkény's The Toth Family and The Flower Show (New Directions, 1966), a book with two stories: the first an allegorical story about fear and authority, and the second a fable about different types of reality in modern life; Zsolt Csalog's Lajos M., Aged 45 (Budapest: Maecenas, 1989), an extraordinary memoir of life in a Soviet labor camp; Kálmán Mikszáth's St. Peter's Umbrella (Corvina, 1962); and Zsigmond Móricz's Seven Pennies (Corvina, 1988), a collection of short stories by one of Hungary's most celebrated authors.

Movies -- In the movie Sunshine (1999), Hungarian director István Szabó tells the life of three generations of Jews before, during, and after the war. A wonderfully dark, but metaphorically powerful movie is Kontroll (2003), in Hungarian with English subtitles. The movie Munich (2005) was partially filmed by the opera house.