On Hungarian Literature Online a review of György Spiró’s yet to be translated Spring Exhibition, a novel whose main character misses out on the 1956 uprising due to a hemorrhoid operation. There is also an interview with the author where he talks about the difficulty of dealing with anachronistic communist lingo and his memories of 1956 as an 11-year old.
In a statement that has some pretty obvious parallels at the moment, besides being very, very scary, Spiró talks about the place of civil wars in contemporary and future history:
“Eastern European uprisings and revolutions are typically 19th-century phenomena, and we are far from the culmination of the process. We are part of a long era that may last several hundred years, and this means more revolutions and civil wars to come.”
photo © The American Hungarian Federation
