Lesser-known in Hungary than abroad, Péter Zilahy’s published in multiple languages across the globe and is one of Hungary’s most exciting, diverse writers. Originally a poet, his multi-faceted work spans prose, drama, essays, live performances and myriad genres in-between.
He’s also a photographer and head of the Hungarian Writers’ League football team. We first met him at the recent FUNZINE event, 6:3 Reloaded (a literary duel between the British and Hungarian Writers Leagues), and, to coincide with the release of the English translation of his novel The Last Window Giraffe, we decided it was time to find out more about this Magyar Jack-of-all-trades…
Born in Budapest in 1970, Peter’s traveled the world (capturing much of it on film) reflecting upon his experiences and observations of humanity in a style imbibed with wry humor, sharp wit, an economy of style and unwavering, for want of a better word, beauty – as the particularly good translation of his recent work reveals. Between 1998 and 2002 he was senior editor of The World Literature Series, and his prose and poetry have been widely translated, which, despite the geographic and historic specificity of much of his work, goes some way to demonstrate the multi-layered nature of his writing, and its universal appeal.
In 2007, his particularly unusual (and extremely funny) collection of prose, recounting much of his travels, Three plus 1, written in seven genres, was published; the same year, his play Der lange Weg nach nebenan toured Germany, where he currently lives (in Einstein’s house) as this year’s Albert Einstein Fellow. He’s also recently performed a sell-out show on New York’s Broadway, a shortened version of which was run by the Financial Times this November.
The Last Window Giraffe was first published in 1998, and has since been translated into more than 20 languages. It’s won multiple awards, as well as having been adapted into a live stage performance. Based formally upon a piece of every Hungarian child’s youth, the picture dictionary Ablak-Zsiráf, it was conceived during time spent in Belgrade. Offset by playful, often critical, humor, it’s an observation of Zilahy’s world of the ‘70s and ‘80s, spanning Hungary, Central Europe and The Balkans, as well as the Belgrade protest of 1996-97. Just as the original children’s book makes sense of the world through a simplicity of language, events in The Last Window Giraffe, often seemingly unrelated in subject and time, are driven by the same, child-like structure. It’s filled, too, with original illustrations from the children’s book, alongside Zilahy’s own photographs.
The award-winning novel offers an insight into a world behind the Iron Curtain that you don’t need to come at armed with a prior knowledge of the region’s history. Zilahy, along with the chaos of the period, crackles on the page in this critical memoir of life under a dictatorship.
The Last Window Giraffe is available at Libri (www.libri.hu)
Alexandra (www.alexandra.hu) and Bookline (www.bookline.hu) stores.