And the 2002 Nobel Prize for Literature Goes to Imre Kertész, Jew and Hungarian

Abstract

In his article "And the 2002 Nobel Prize for Literature Goes to Imre Kertész, Jew and Hungarian" Steven Tötösy de Zepetnek presents an introduction to the recepient of the 2002 Nobel Prize in Literature, Imre Kertész, and his work. Tötösy de Zepetnek places Kertész's work in the context of Central European culture and within that in the genre of Central European Jewish memoir literature (but not autobiography). In Tötösy de Zepetnek's opinion the cultural and social relevance of Jewish memoir writing today is of particular importance precisely for the same reasons Kertész articulates when he says, "I am a survivor. There are few of us left, we guard the memory of the Holocaust. We slowly disappear and die. And we disappear" (13 October 2002). The relevance of Kertész and his writing is acute because of the yet again growing of anti-Semitism in contemporary Central and East Europe.