Recommended Books

A good number of the best books on Hungary are now out of print. If you can't find a given book in a bookstore or on the Internet, check in a university library. 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). 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; the setting: Nazi-occupied Budapest.

Joseph Rothschild has written two excellent surveys of 20th-century eastern European history, both with large sections on Hungary. They are East Central Europe Between the Two World Wars (University of Washington Press, 1974) and Return to Diversity: A Political History of East Central Europe Since World War II (Oxford University Press, 1989).

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 the 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, 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 -- Hungary in the Culinaria series (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.

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.

Fiction -- Not all the best examples of Hungarian literature are available in translation, but 2002 Nobel prize winner Imre Kertész's Fateless is a must. You should also look for any translations of the 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; György Konrád's The Case Worker (Penguin, 1987), a portrayal of a political system in disrepair; István Vrkény'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.