George Szirtes Books

Winner of the 2015 Man Booker International PrizeThe Melancholy of Resistance, László Krasznahorkai's magisterial, surreal novel, depicts a chain of mysterious events in a small Hungarian town.A circus, promising to display the stuffed body of the largest whale in the world, arrives in the dead of winter, prompting bizarre rumours. Word spreads that the circus folk have a sinister purpose in mind, and the frightened citizens cling to any manifestation of order they can find - music, cosmology, fascism.The novel's characters are unforgettable: the evil Mrs. Eszter, plotting her takeover of the town; her weakling husband; and Valuska, our hapless hero with his head in the clouds, who is the tender centre of the book, the only pure and noble soul to be found.Compact, powerful and intense, The Melancholy of Resistance, as its enormously gifted translator George Szirtes puts it, 'is a slow lava flow of narrative, a vast black river of type.' And yet, miraculously, the novel, in the words of Guardian, 'lifts the reader along in lunar leaps and bounds.'

A poet's memoir of his mother that flows backwards through time, and excavates a shard of European history - a deeply honest, tender and yet unsentimental autobiographical journey.

George Szirtes fled from Budapest with his family after the 1956 Hungarian uprising. Many of these poems relate to his arrival in England as a young child, and to the themes of identity, memory, belonging, war, and upheaval, with a sequence on living now in a country under siege from coronavirus.

A rediscovered masterwork from famed Hungarian novelist Sándor Márai, Portraits of a Marriage tracks the lifelong entanglement of a man and two women haunted by class differences and misdirected longings. Peter and Ilonka are a wealthy couple whose outwardly perfect marriage is undone by secrets. The insecure Ilonka believes she can never be elegant and refined enough for her husband, while Peter has long been tormented by his forbidden love for Judit, a peasant and servant in his childhood home. What Judit longs for most, however, is freedom from the constraints of the society that has ensnared all three in a vortex of love and loss. Set against the backdrop of Hungary between the wars, in a world on the verge of dramatic change, this exquisite novel offers further posthumous evidence of Marai’s brilliance. Translated from the Hungarian by George Szirtes

This anthology of new writing promotes contemporary literature of the English language from Britain and the rest of the Commonwealth. It contains new names among older, recognizable names and includes short stories, poems, novels in progress and short fiction.

It is midnight, October 31st 1758 and Giacomo Casanova has escaped from a Venetian prison after sixteen months consigned to darkness and the underworld. Shaking off the enforced solitude, Casanova makes his way Bolzano - the small village where he was dealt a cruel hand.

Exploring themes of necessity and the various obstacles that hinder it, this poetry collection delves into complex emotions such as exile, distance, and identity. The poems confront haunting feelings and despair, reflecting on the challenges faced in the pursuit of fulfillment and understanding.

The book captures the creative exchange between poets Alvin Pang and George Szirtes during the isolation of the Covid-19 pandemic. As they navigate the challenges of life and time, their correspondence evolves into a poetic dialogue that addresses pressing global issues, including the Black Lives Matter movement, Brexit, and the conflict in Ukraine. Through their friendship and shared experiences, they explore the complexities of the human condition, using language as a means to connect and reflect on a rapidly changing world.