Imre Kertész

Also: K'erŭt'esŭ, Imne · K., I. · Kertes, Imre · Kerutēsu, Imure · Kirtīs, Imra · Kjertijes, Imrje · אימרה קרטס · קרטש, אימרה

(1929– ), writer and translator. The first Hungarian writer to receive the Nobel Prize, Imre Kertész was conspicuous for winning it as a Jew who wrote about the Holocaust. Kertész identifies himself as a Jew without adherence to Judaism, Jewish tradition, or Jewish nationhood. He wrote his major work, Sorstalanság (Fateless; 1975), about the experience of Auschwitz. Although the novel is written in Hungarian, Kertész in other ways saw his residence in Hungary as a kind of internal exile. He explains in his novel Kudarc (Fiasco; 1988) that he returned to Hungary from Buchenwald by chance, and t