‘It has become difficult to live’: Hungarian writers bemoan country’s hostile environment | Hungary
Gyula, a quiet and beautiful town in eastern Hungary, is best known for its sausages. It has no direct rail connection to Budapest, but it has a library and castle. He will soon also have an official replica of his Nobel medal.
“Congratulations to László Krasznahorkai, the first Nobel laureate from Gyula,” proclaim billboards in the town, paying tribute to the 71-year-old author who won this year’s Nobel Prize in literature for his “engaging and visionary works.”
In December, many citizens watched live, including an audience gathered in Gyula’s wood-paneled library, as he accepted the medal at the Swedish Academy in Stockholm. The town marked the occasion with a week of readings, workshops and an exhibition dedicated to Hungarian Nobel laureates.
The author himself was not there; And not just because he accepted the award. Like many Hungarian artists and writers today, Krasznahorkai no longer lives in his home country.
Authors and rights groups say Viktor Orbán’s far-right Fidesz government is presiding over an increasingly hostile and repressive climate as it prepares for its toughest re-election campaign since taking power in 2010. The state has seized control of one of the country’s biggest publishers, homophobic laws have reshaped bookstores and writers complain of dwindling opportunities.
In an interview with Swedish broadcaster SVT on the occasion of the Nobel Prize, Krasznahorkai compared Hungary to an alcoholic parent. “My mother drinks, loses her beauty, fights,” he said. “I still love him.”
Many Hungarian intellectuals emigrated. Award-winning writer Gergely Péterfy is among them: she moved to the south of Italy and founded an artist community there. He said the move was driven partly by curiosity and love of the Mediterranean lifestyle, but also by politics. “In the last 15 years, living in Hungary has become very difficult due to Orbán’s anti-cultural stance,” he said.
Since Fidesz came to power, government actors have seized control of universities, galleries and popular media outlets. The national culture fund, chaired by the Minister of Culture and Innovation, directed money from independent unions and periodicals to pro-government journalists and writers.
The remaining independent literary publications are struggling to survive as the state grows in influence over advertisers, publications generate less revenue, and are unable to adequately pay contributors.
“I don’t know a young writer [in Hungary] 32-year-old writer Csenge Enikő Élő asks: “Who makes a living?” he said.
Élő writes prose and poetry, and her first book was published by an independent publisher last year. He laments the polarization in literature: “One side receives a disproportionately large amount of funding, the other side very little.”
The Fidesz government has also poured hundreds of billions of forints into the Mathias Corvinus Collegium, a conservative educational institution headed by Orbán’s political director with several international outposts and its own publishing house.
In 2023, MCC acquired 98.5% shares of Libri, Hungary’s leading publisher and bookstore chain. That same summer, Libri’s stores wrapped books depicting same-sex relationships in plastic, in compliance with Fidesz’s “child protection” law banning the promotion and display of homosexuality and gender reassignment.
“A significant portion of literary works have been effectively banned for the sake of political campaigning,” said Krisztián Nyáry, author and creative director of Líra, the country’s second-largest bookstore chain and publishing group. Líra has been fined multiple times for defying anti-LGBTQ legislation and is appealing the fines in national and international courts.
While Nyáry is reassured that Libri employs the same people as before it acquired MCC, he remains cautious. “There are Chekhov rifles hanging on the wall here. No one has fired yet, but we know that if there is a rifle on stage, sooner or later someone will fire it,” he said.
The Fidesz government has been criticized for supporting right-wing and controversial writers, including them in the national curriculum and seeking their official recognition.
In 2020, teaching unions expressed outrage when the state’s list of required texts included the works of József Nyírő, a member of Hungary’s far-right government during the Second World War, while excluding Imre Kertész, a Holocaust survivor and the country’s first Nobel literature laureate.
By contrast, the government has made little effort to promote Krasznahorkai internationally, its editor János Szegő said. But although Krasznahorkai criticized the government for its ambivalent attitude towards Russia and Ukraine in a recent interview, describing it as a “psychiatric case”, his award was celebrated all over the country, regardless of party line.
“It makes one’s heart skip a beat when a person of Hungarian origin receives the Nobel Prize,” said Szegő. “This is great confirmation for a small language that has always been on the brink of extinction.”
Ernő Görgényi, the Fidesz mayor of the author’s hometown, said: “The greatest appreciation for us as a society is that books about the places and people of Gyula are now on bookshelves all over the world.”
His administration will place a plaque on the house where Krasznahorkai grew up and name a school library after him. He plans to eventually run Krasznahorkai-themed tours of the city, inspired by Dublin’s Ulysses walk.
“There is no need to bring politics into this,” said Márta Becsiné Szabó, 75, a Gyula resident who attended the town’s Nobel celebrations. “The important thing is that he is from Gyula and is Hungarian.”
