Bence Sárközy: In the end, we did what we had to do

"These small changes are worth making not only for the sake of others, but for our own sake as well. ... Measure – in all things – was what we lost first." HLO interviews the author of The Art of Beekeeping, Tibor Weiner Sennyey.

"This kind of postconceptualist hybrid I wrote is not native to Hungarian literature. A concentrated account of twenty-five years of personal – aesthetic, ethical, political, sexual – experiences." – Hanna Zelma Horányi interviews Lili Kemény about her Margó Prize-winning debut novel, Nem (No).

What cannot be done, however, is to assign art a specific task, because then it first becomes applied work, and second, propaganda. – Poet Anna Zilahi speaks to Borbála Szakács about deep seas and octopi performing Ligeti, apropos of her latest collection, Tenderness.

Okapi Press is an independent micro-publisher focusing on poetry. Its volumes include Singular, a previously unpublished manuscript by Dezső Tandori, Songs for 3:45 AM, Márton Simon’s volume in Tímea Sipos’s English translation, and XXX, Márton András Gerevich’s queer poetry collection. Márton Simon, poet, performer, and the publisher’s founder answers Hanna Zelma Horányi’s questions. 

"Ideology is dangerous territory, especially for artists – we’re a sensitive and persuasive lot. Could there be a more dangerous hotbed for didactic work?" – HLO's Austin Wagner interviews poet Júlia Kustos.

History seems to have an unfair advantage over literature: it presents situations that are impossible to imagine, or that only the greatest minds can conceive… To me, it seems to say more about what it means to be human than either literature or psychology. – Litera speaks with Zsuzsa Rakovszky.

The American author and journalist Hope Reese answers HLO's questions about her new book The Women Are Not Fine (Brazen, 2025), a journalistic investigation into the quiet Hungarian village that gave rise to one of the deadliest poisoning epidemics of the 20th century.

The funeral of Hungarian film director Béla Tarr was held today in Budapest. In his memory we present three conversations with Tarr, held in 2004, 2008, and 2021, which together form a life interview. In these interviews Tarr speaks to Csaba Formanek and Dénes Varga for Filmhu, the Hungarian movie websiteabout his beginnings in film, about Satantango, Werckmeister Harmonies, The Man from London, about his collaborations with László Krasznahorkai, about hope and the end of the world, and gives his advice to aspiring filmmakers today.

Tea Publishing House is an independent publisher best known for children's literature, popular psychology, social issues, and parenting books, as well as fiction titles including Ákos Kele Fodor's Honti Hantok ('The Burial Mounds of Hont'). Publishing director, Aliz Kinter, answers Hanna Zelma Horányi's questions.

Leányvállalat is the independent publisher of such titles as These Roma Are Queer, The Taste of Motherland in My Mouth and Crybaby. Founder, Geraldine Molnár, answers Hanna Zelma Horányi's questions about the publisher's beginnings, its focus on social justice, and the challenges of running a small publisher in Hungary today.

"In a certain sense, we’ve all been forced into this, because this culture is our mother, and we can’t bear to watch what happens if we don’t take care of her." An interview with Márton Simon for Litera's Double or Nothing campaign.

"What has changed significantly? Me! I have changed significantly. I’m no longer capable of any sort of fervor, for example. I could never again write or compose music obsessively. I wouldn’t be able. I’ve experienced too much for that, seen too many systems and situations that are in equilibrium with each other and are immovable." – A long interview with the Nobel Laureate László Krasznahorkai, held in 2017, after the publication of Baron Wenckheim's Homecoming. The Hungarian writer discusses prizes, his time in West Berlin, his travels to Mongolia and China, the urgent requests of his characters that he write them, and the connections between language and music.

"When I start reading a novel, I have to stop and open up myself to another world, because that world is the one that’s speaking, not my own. We have to be quiet so a poem can sing. And we’re forever waiting for our own turn to sing." – An interview with Hungarian author Andrea Tompa for Litera's Double or Nothing campaign.

"A country doesn’t have bookshelves, at most it has libraries. A country doesn’t have a conscience. Bookshelves and consciences are the province of individuals." – An interview with Péter Nádas for Litera's Double or Nothing campaign.

“The bookshelves are still intact, and I think this is a good country. As for its potential, it’s great, the product itself is mediocre, and I constantly feel – or rather time and time again I feel, because I'm not paranoid – my own responsibility for it to get from five to six,” – an interview with Endre Kukorelly for Litera’s Double or Nothing campaign.

In a joint podcast by HLO and Litera, Owen Good and Dóra Szekeres talked with writer and translator George Szirtes about what it was like to translate Hungarian works such as Imre Madách's The Tragedy of Man, Krasznahorkai's The Melancholy of Resistance, and Sátántangó into English. And Szirtes introduces his latest translation: a new collection of poems by Krisztina Tóth.

George Szirtes, T. S. Eliot Prize-winning poet and recipient of the King's Gold Medal for Poetry, is one of the most prominent figures in contemporary English literature and a committed translator of Hungarian poetry and fiction. We met him in England and Hungary and talked about his mixed identity, his Hungarian roots and the simultaneously impossible yet inevitable experience of becoming English – An interview by Owen Good and Dóra Szekeres.

"Schein’s urban sensibilities are palpably and keenly attuned to the grit and debris of Budapest streets — as well as the ever-present echoes of its sinister past, its buried histories — and yet allegorically, his poetry soars above place and time." We're proud to share an HLO interview with Gábor Schein, Hungarian author of Beyond the Cordons, a selection of over twenty-five years of his poetry, and translators Ottilie Mulzet and Erika Mihálycsa.

"When people ask me what I am, as they often do, a “guest” is the answer I've come up with," – says George Szirtes, the British poet and literary translator of Hungarian origin, referring to his Hungarian identity. Read a sample from our extensive interview with one of the most important figures in contemporary English literature, conducted in both England and Hungary.