Péter Zilahy |
Hungarian writer, publisher and photographer Péter Zilahy (b. 1970) has studied English literature, philosophy and cultural anthropology in Budapest, New York and Zürich. He has published in Hungarian works by, inter alia, Viktor Pelevin, Ingo Schulze and Ian McEwan. The debut collection of poems Lepel alatt ugrásra kész szobor ("A Statue Under Its Sheet Ready to Leap") came out in 1993. His short stories are about trips to Sydney, New York, Cape Town and St Petersburg. Zilahy's latest work Az utolsó ablakzsiráf (1998, The Last Window Giraffe) is based on a Hungarian children's picture dictionary in which the world was explained in a simple and straightforward manner, and problems could always be resolved sensibly. The first word in the dictionary was window (=ablak) and the last giraffe (= zsiráf). The work contains Zilahy's own photographs and depicts the period of transition in Eastern Europe in the 1970s and 1980s and the demonstrations in Belgrade in 1996 and 1997. The structural solutions and spirit of the novel have been compared to Joseph Heller's novel Catch 22. Whereas Heller reveals the madness of war, Zilahy depicts the insanities of a dictatorship. The Last Window Giraffe has been translated into eleven languages. The book has been turned into a radio play granted an award by Hungarian Radio and is currently being dramatised for the stage. It has also appeared in a multimedia CD-ROM in English, German, Hungarian and Serbian. The multimedia work has sixteen appearances this year in Europe, and it will be having its premiere in Berlin at the Literaturwerkstatt on 30th May. Péter Esterhazy has dubbed Zilahy the 'white raven' of Hungarian literature, with a “sense of multiple fictionality”. |
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