Is literature capable of revealing the complex and refined reality of the workings of the soul and the world? Where does a portrait of an era end, and where does art begin? How can reality be transfigured into art, and what, indeed, is the difference between the two? Where, precisely, does the boundary lie? “I believe that writing, the art of writing – the novel or the short story, good prose – functions well when it can present a distillation of the world, the personal version and vision of the world held by the self, the creator, which no one else can offer. And through this, it can make even unliveable things experientially accessible to the reader.” This is how Miklós György Száraz responded, perhaps to similar questions, in the year he received the Prima Prize [1].
Miklós György Száraz was born in Budapest in 1958, the son of the Kossuth Prize-winning playwright and essayist György Száraz and Dr Márta Margit Marek, a physician. During his childhood, he lived in Törökbálint, where his mother worked as a doctor at the tuberculosis hospital; the family moved to the capital in 1975. In the context of his oeuvre, these biographical details are far from incidental, as their traces recur with remarkable richness in his works.
From childhood onwards, he was drawn to adventure and travel, which became points of departure and orientation for a diverse and fertile journey of self-discovery, and later sources of inspiration for his writings. Even during these early travels, he turned – and continues to turn – his attention with exceptional sensitivity to the everyday lives of Hungarians living beyond the borders, and to the fate of minorities (Roma and Jewish communities, and others). His interviews reveal that the aim of his journeys was not solely the acquisition of knowledge, but also enjoyment: to see the world and encounter ways of life unfolding before him as something new. This openness is clearly reflected in both his artistic and non-artistic works. His writings convey an extraordinary affirmation of life, a curiosity towards others, and a persistent desire to explore both the self and the world.
From a young age, he was convinced he would become either an archaeologist or a historian. Ruins, the material remnants and traces of the past, have fascinated him since childhood. Although between 1979 and 1984 he studied history and archival science at Eötvös Loránd University – gaining some exposure to archaeology as well – he did not ultimately become either a historian or an archaeologist. During the years spent searching for a vocation, he was also drawn to photography and filmmaking; after some hesitation and exploration, however, he eventually settled on literature. It appears that since the mid-1990s he has pursued writing as a profession. His steadily expanding body of work includes numerous philosophical and historical-interpretive articles, essays and albums. Many interviewers have noted that he is a ‘lone wolf’ in Hungarian literature, belonging to none of the established literary groupings. As Györgyei Szabó Magdolna has observed, he is “among the narrow group of contemporary authors in Hungary who are able to make a living from writing as freelancers [2].” In another interview, he speaks of his early journalistic work – “I wrote for all sorts of factory newsletters as a way of earning money [3]” – though this period was short-lived, and his income soon came primarily from albums created for major publishing houses, almost always based on his own ideas. The distinctive nature and stylistic diversity of these works suggest that financial considerations were hardly the primary motivation here.
Although his writings began to appear with varying regularity from March 1980 onwards (initially under various pseudonyms), he made his debut as a novelist relatively late. The first edition of his novel Az Ezüst Macska (lit. The Silver Cat) was published in 1997 by Pannon Publisher, then Hungary’s largest newspaper publishing house (the work has since appeared in three Hungarian editions and one Italian edition). The manuscript was launched by Ferenc Juhász, the Kossuth and József Attila Prize-winning poet and editor, who introduced it with the following words: “It had been a long time since I had taken such pleasure in a piece of prose as when Miklós György Száraz handed me a text, at Új Írás, asking me to read it. It was an excellent piece of writing, and we published it in the journal. The young writer was doing something new, even then unusual and exuberant, a densely layered and madly beautiful tale of human destinies. A luxuriant, overflowing love of life – even a reverence for life – surged through this twisting, eddying, ironic prose, overcoming the increasingly desiccated rigour of theory and shattering its inward-narrowing grid [4].” Juhász compared the debut author of The Silver Cat with writers including François Rabelais, Charles de Coster, Gyula Krúdy, and Kálmán Mikszáth.
The significance of The Silver Cat was immediately recognised by younger generations of writers. In the winter 1998 issue of Irodalom visszavág, the following assessment was published: “Miklós György Száraz’s first novel marks a significant, long-overdue step in contemporary prose. The ‘novel’ has ripened, thereby legitimising the tendency that had previously appeared only in isolated narrative experiments by young representatives of the new storytelling prose. This novel is a spontaneous expression of the narrative-technical, anti-textual, new-metaphysical prose wave that had emerged in recent years, primarily in the works of György Attila in Transylvania, Norbert Haklik in Hungary, and, less consciously, András Cserna-Szabó. The Silver Cat is, of course, far more complex than the works of these younger writers, drawing simultaneously on multiple traditions and opening in several directions – a complexity stemming primarily from Száraz’s age (he is fifteen years older than those mentioned), experience, models, and generational positioning, which nonetheless aligns philosophically with the new storytellers.” The novel was discussed not only by younger critics but also by writers sixteen years his senior, such as Attila Szepesi and Endre Mányoki, and it was also taken up by Holmi.
This warmly received work was followed by further widely discussed novels, novellas, and short-story collections. In 2001, Lovak a ködben (lit. Horses in the Fog) appeared, and Lóránt Kabdebó welcomed it with the following words: “Miklós György Száraz brings a real past to life through the memories of twentieth-century memoirists, creating his uniquely animated, marvellously life-loving and suffering-enduring female figure, from whom a future is born – marked, yet certainly awaited and known. Not a dream, but a future that can be taken as real. Grounded. Emerging from tradition, a healthy and liveable human constitution. Should I believe it? As I read, I do. Its creator proved this with great authorial force, as if borrowing the Creator’s own thoughts for the act of creation, thereby elevating this uncelebratable century into a celebration [5].”
That same year, 2001, Menyasszonyfátyol (lit. Bridal Veil) was published, followed two years later by ¡Ó, Santo Domingo!, which may be read as an intellectual travelogue – “a love confession to Granada”. His journeys through Spain, Andalusia, and Italy, as well as his stay in Tibet, proved just as formative for Száraz as his earlier wanderings in Transylvania; they recur throughout his books, albums and texts of varying length.
Much of his work resists easy categorisation. Although many could be classified as albums, their literary value is beyond question. Volumes such as Várak (lit. Castles, 2003), Fényes Magyarország (lit. Radiant Hungary, 2004), Erdély csodái (lit. The Wonders of Transylvania, 2004), A Duna (lit. The Danube, 2006), and later Budapest (2018) and Csodás Magyarország (lit. Wondrous Hungary, 2021) present readers with a rich visual world and are written with the ambition of scholarly popularisation, while their essayistic nature – marked by personal reflection, autobiographical digression, contemplation, reverie, and the animation of the imagination – is equally undeniable. Many interpreters have described these works as extended essay cycles.
Autobiographical elements also frequently surface within the richly populated worlds of his novels. Interviews reveal that even minor details and secondary characters reflect personal experiences. Real-life scenes are woven into his fiction in a manner that is less didactic than stream-of-consciousness, accumulating into dense detail, while the created fictional world – often described as magical realism [6] – culminates in a memoir-like yet distinctly literary rewriting of landscape and society.
In Horses in the Fog, as well as – albeit more emphatically – in later works such as Rio Lobo (2021) and Egyszer fiúk, egyszer lányok (lit. Once Boys, Once Girls, 2021), corporeality is a fundamental element and driving force of the narrative. The focus is not on the sexual life of a mature man, but on that of a young woman (Horses in the Fog) and a young boy (in the latter two works), both inexperienced. Eroticism is not treated as an end in itself but as a liminal state of discovery, recognition, and exploration of another’s emotions and bodily responses – a means of self-analysis. Experience never leads to the boredom of over-familiarity but to either a form of harmony or a world shrouded in the inexhaustible fog of pleasure.
His later novels were likewise highly successful upon publication, with self-exploration becoming increasingly prominent. A major work is the large-scale novel Apám darabokban (lit. My Father in Pieces, 2016), described as a ‘factual novel’. One historian critic concluded: “Literary critics will no doubt weigh other aspects, but we can be certain that the author has produced a text of importance for research into mentality, lifestyle, and, more broadly, intellectual history.” The book combines letters, notes and diary fragments from the family archive with stories and anecdotes preserved in the family’s collective memory, supplemented only occasionally by creative ‘additions’. The figure of the writer-father emerges in such a way that some actions are explained while other questions remain unanswered – even for the reader – as the text simultaneously reveals intimate details of a large family’s complex past. Although the title refers to the father, the dedication is addressed to the mother, who appears not merely as a (later) writer’s wife but as a strong, intelligent woman with her own profession and aims. The narrative is organised partly around the 1956 Revolution and partly around the first year or so of post-revolutionary Hungary, offering a profound and complex portrait of the period. Letters recount the fervour and bloodiest days of the revolution, the examination period at the medical university, academic injustices and personal uncertainties, while older stories and the later futures of the protagonists also emerge, including the narrator’s childhood. As the interweaving of narrative strands and temporal layers draws the reader ever deeper in, attention is also drawn – as the narrator himself notes – to the remarkable care and personal honesty with which the letters were written, revealing not only the two identities of György Száraz, the two writers, but also the late physician Márta Marek as figures of distinctive humour, compelling expression and sharp insight.
Reflecting on this unusually structured, generically hybrid work, the author remarked in an interview: “While writing the book, I spent a long time pondering where the boundary lies between discretion and indiscretion, what can be shown and what cannot, what my parents or grandparents might have been ashamed of, and what would have hurt them had they been alive to read my lines [7].” Not only the events but also the characters’ inner worlds are exposed. Although the individual letters and notes have distinct authors, the novelistic whole forms a complex unity in which temporal planes and narrative fragments interweave, demanding active engagement from the reader.
His two most recent novels to date, Az álomvadász (lit. The Dream Hunter, 2017) and Osztozkodók (lit. Those Who Share, 2018), are shorter yet no less experimental or exploratory. The former leads readers into the fascinating worlds of dreams, the unconscious, and mysticism, while the latter presents a peculiar story that examines the hidden mechanisms of the human psyche and the motivations behind decisions.
Miklós György Száraz’s works are diverse and multifaceted, differing not only in narrative content but also in style. What unites them is a desire for exploration and understanding – of the individual’s inner world, the surrounding world, and the past. Through situations set in distant landscapes or familiar, homely settings, his writing confronts readers with moments they might otherwise overlook in everyday life, compelling a discovery: that deeper meaning and value are not always immediately apparent.
[2022]