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Tóth's collection is an excellent and accessible new addition to the growing number of Hungarian texts translated into English. - LA Review of BooksKrisztina Tóth's first substantial work in prose after four volumes of remarkable verse, consists of fifteen beautifully written and highly sensual short stories. Most are narrated with poetic intensity and intimacy from a young, unnamed female narrator's point of view. Whether about childhood acquaintances, school camps and trips, or love and deceit in love, they are all are set against the backdrop of Hungary's socialist era in its declining years. The stories are carefully strung, like jewels in a necklace, along metaphorical 'lines', as in the title of the collection and the subtitle of the pieces. The losses, disappointments, and tragedies great and small recounted here offer nuanced 'mirrorings' of the female soul and linger long in the memory.
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Krisztina Tóth is one of Hungary's most respected, popular and accomplished writers and an outspoken public intellectual, engaged particularly with the struggle for women's rights and the increasingly severe limits on cultural autonomy in Hungary. Her first collection, published at the age of 22, won the Radnóti prize and she has since garnered a dozen or more major awards for her poetry, prose and (often taboo-breaking) books for children. Her prose is as outstanding as her poetry: she has helped to define the character of both genres in contemporary Hungary. She is also a translator and critic, particularly of French literature, while being widely translated herself: 26 books in 15 languages. In English, some dozen short stories and a volume of prose (Pixel, tr. Owen Good, 2019) are available, while such distinguished poets as George Szirtes and David Hill have published numerous outstanding versions of her poems.
Riassunto
Barcode, Krisztina Toth's first substantial work in prose after four volumes of remarkable verse, consists of fifteen beautifully written and highly sensual short stories. Each story, apart from one, is told with poetic intensity and intimacy from a young, unnamed female narrator's point of view.
