In the past few years, many contemporary works of Hungarian literature have been published in Estonia. These include László Krasznahorkai's 'Sátántangó', Péter Esterházy's 'Helping Verbs of the Heart', the first two volumes of Vilmos Kondor's 'Budapest noir' cycle, and even János Háy's collection of short stories, which was published by our Institute. Works by female authors, including short stories, have been published in Estonia for a relatively long time ago. Most readers perhaps will remember Éva Janikovszky's works for and about children, published in the 2000s, or Alaine Polcz's novel 'One Woman in the War', published in 2017. In 2015, the Hungarian Cultural Association (Ungari Kultuuriselts) published 'The World's Saddest Orchestra', a collection of short stories including the works of Éva Bánki, Margit Halász and Éva Berniczky.
Following on the 'Hungarian Pocket Books' series launched by the Institute in 2018, this time we wanted to present a selection of works by contemporary Hungarian female writers. The authors featured include both award-winning, prolific and young, first-volume writers. The topics are varied, the tone of the writing fresh and dynamic, sometimes poignant, sometimes laugh-out-loud, sometimes thought-provoking, sometimes astonishing. Our open goal was to use this variety to draw the attention of Estonian publishers to the diversity of Hungarian literature, hopefully allowing for a more thorough presentation of the authors in the future.
The works have been translated by some of the best young Estonian-Hungarian translators - thanks to Lauri Eesmaa, Reet Klettenberg, Mirjam Parve, Berit Puidet, Siiri Kolka, Lea Kreinin, Kadri Pärtel, Orsolya Kiss and Silver Sild for their help in the translations, and to Lauri Eesmaa and Piret Toomet for their help in proofreading the translations.