Why read Prae, Vol. 1?

Book cover of Prae, Vol. 1

Book description

Considered an eerie attack on realism, when first published in 1934, Miklós Szentkuthy's debut novel Prae so astonished Hungarian critics that many deemed it monstrous, derogatorily referred to Szentkuthy as cosmopolitan, and classified him alien to Hungarian culture. Incomparable and unprecedented in Hungarian literature, Prae compels recognition as a serious…

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Topics

Modernism

Genres

Literary fiction

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Why read it?

1 author picked Prae, Vol. 1 as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Rocco Gangle

Author

There’s nothing quite like discovering an author you’ve never heard of who makes you want to find everything you can by them, the kind of writer who feels like a secret you can’t keep to yourself.

After devouring the sprawling, beautiful, delicate, vulgar, and voluptuous masterpiece that is Prae, something compels me to stop total strangers in the street: “Have you read Szentkuthy? You must…”.

Before Tim Wilkinson’s recent translations, this early 20th-century Hungarian modernist has remained almost entirely unknown outside of esoteric literary circles.

This is literature as diatribe, as rhapsody, as a profoundly conscious immersion in the surreality…

From Rocco's 3 favorite reads in 2023.