ANNA ÉDES - DEZSŐ KOSZTOLÁNYI / A REVIVED MODERN CLASSIC / TRANSLATED AND WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY GEORGE SZIRTES / New Directions, 1993 / Paperback

ISBN-13: 9780811212557 / 978-0811212557 

ISBN-10: 0811212556

Printed in the USA

Pages 240

Anna Edes is a dark and deeply moving naturalistic novel, a classic work of twentieth-century Hungarian literature. A skillful portrayal of the cruelty and emptiness of bourgeois life, it was first published in 1926 and enthusiastically received by the intellectual coffee-house society through which it circulated. The novel was later acknowledged by authors such as Thomas Mann as a model of language and form, and in turn established Dezső Kosztolányi as one of the most significant writers of Eastern European fiction.

Anna is the hard-working and long-suffering heroine, the unhappy maid destroyed by her pitiless employers. Her tragic relationship with them is played out against the political turbulence in Budapest following the First World War. Yet her endurance and revenge are depicted with keen psychological as well as historical insight, becoming, in the words of the translator, "not merely an argument about social conditions but raised to genuine tragedy."

Dezső Kosztolányi was born in 1885 and gained notoriety as a journalist in Budapest dur- ing the fall of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. An integral member of the intellectual and literary circles of the period, he published his first collection of poems, Within Four Walls, to great acclaim in 1907. His writings have influenced generations of Hungarian writers ever since. He died of throat cancer in 1936.

"Kosztolányi is) among those who today best express the spiritual and cultural life of Europe."-Thomas Mann

"Kosztolányi pulls out all the stylistic stops in a comprehensive attempt to write this period of his life out of his system, to redeem himself through sheer verve and style." -(London) Times Literary Supplement

"The surreal images with which the novelist conveys Anna's elemental feelings of terror, misery and infrequent pleasure hang in the mind long after the book is finished." -Sunday Telegraph

Cover illustration by the translator George Szirtes; design by Hermann Strohbach

INTRODUCTION:

The story of Anna Édes is one of innocence exploited. The very name of the heroine means 'sweet', and sweetness is part of her nature. A peasant girl up from the village, who receives employ- ment as a domestic in Budapest, honest, hard-working and simple to the point of simple-mindedness, she is exploited by certain members of the newly recovered middle-classes of 1919- a selfish and reactionary section of society which had suffered two severe shocks: defeat in the First World War, then a brace of short-lived socialist revolutions. A third great shock, the loss of two-thirds of the country's territory by decree of the Treaty of Trianon, was still to come.

Hungary had entered the war as part of the dual monarchy, her territory extending far into the countries that presently surround her. The various messily distributed nationalities naturally wanted independence, or at least greater autonomy, and as the war pro- gressed they joined the Allies. The defeat of the dual monarchy increased the clamour for full independence. Then, as now, the crumbling of an empire led to a rise in nationalistic feeling. The first revolution in October 1918, known as the Autumn Roses Revolution, established the socialist government of Count Mihály Károlyi, who declared Hungary a republic. But the external pres- sure was too great. The Romanian army advanced on Hungary and in March Károlyi resigned to be replaced by Béla Kun, a Bolshevik who counted on Russian help. His soviet-style Republic of Coun- cils (which included George Lukács as minor member of the govern- ment) instituted a Red Terror, then set about the nationalization of the land that Károlyi had only just begun to distribute to the peasants. By August the experiment was over. The unspeakable had happened and Romanian troops occupied Budapest.

• Publisher: New Directions
• Publication date: 1993
• ISBN 10: 0811212556
• ISBN 13: 9780811212557
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 240