Gyorgy Konrad

From Philosopedia

Konrád, György (1933— )

Author of The Case Worker, Konrád in 1990 was elected president of International P.E.N., the first Central European to hold this position in the organization for poets, essayists, and novelists.

He is a Humanist Laureate in the Council for Secular Humanism’s International Academy of Humanism.

Konrád’s father, the son of Ignac Kohn, changed the family name to that of an uncle, Konrád, who was a Talmudic scholar and owner of a bookstore.

In a 1992 novel, A Feast in the Garden, the Hungarian novelist and essayist Konrád tells about David Kobra, an eleven-year-old who is clearly derived from the author’s own experiences. Depicted are his siblings, parents, grandparents (the Kohns), friends, and neighbors as they perish or survive two World Wars, a Holocaust, a cold Hungarian police state, and all the confusion faced upon entering America. The plot cloys somewhat with all its details of simple domestic Hungarian pleasures, but the best anecdotes are those about the earlier generation, “whose mild skepticism and humanism Konrád/Kobra inherits,” stated critic Suzanne Ruta.

In 1995 he wrote Varakozac and The Melancholy of Rebirth, a collection of essays critical of the post-Communist Central Europe.

In 2000, he wrote The Invisible Voice. In Europe, he is one of the few intellectuals who has defended President George W. Bush's war in Iraq.

Konrád is a member of the Hungarian Humanist Federation, an organization that arose following the fall of the “iron curtain.”

Selected works

A látogató, 1969 - The Case Worker - Vierailija (suom. Anna-Maija Raittila)

Új lakótelepek szociológiai problémái, 1969 (with Iván Szelényi)

Kitörés, 1975 (with Péter Bacsó and Péter Zimre)

A városalapító, 1977 - The City Builder

A cincos, 1978 - The Loser - Häirikkö (suom. Anna-Maija Raittila)

Az értelmiség útja az osztáslyhatalomhoz, 1978 - The Intellectual on the Road to Class Power (with Iván Szelényi)

Az autonómia kísértése, 1980

Antipolitika, 1983 - Antipolitics

Agenda 1: Kerti mulatság, 1989 - Feast in the Garden (first volume of Agenda trilogy)

Pidot puutarhassa (suom. Taisto Nieminen)

Európa köldökén, 1990

Az újjászületés melankóliája, 1991

Agenda 2: Koóra, 1994 - The Stone Dial (second volume of Agenda trilogy)

- Kivikello (suom. Taisto Nieminen)

The Melancholy of Rebirth, 1995

The Invisible Voice: Meditations on Jewish Themes, 2000

{WAS, conversation}