Proud to partner with the Jewish Chronicle Imre Kertesz in conversation with Evi Blaikie
Imre Kertesz, Evi Blaikie
“Nothing has happened since Auschwitz that could reverse or refute Auschwitz. In my writingsthe Holocaust could never be present in the past tense.”
The Hungarian 2002 Nobel Prize winner came to London on a very rare visit to talk about his work, including Fatelessness, the retranslated novel based on his experience as a 14-year-old trying to make sense of the utmost horror and absurdity of life in the death camps and the total lack of understanding that met the survivors. He discussed his life, his writing and antisemitism with Evi Blaikie, a Hungarian hidden child who miraculously escaped the Holocaust, and only belatedly realised that she too was a victim.
Imre Kertesz was born in 1929, deported to Auschwitz in 1944. Most of his novels deal with the Holocaust. In his novel Kaddishfor an Unborn Child, his hero opposes having a child in a world allowing Auschwitz. He has won numerous prizes for his writing. He has also translated Nietzche and Freud into Hungarian.
Evi BlaikieEvi Blaikie is the author of Magda’s Daughter: A HiddenChild’s Journey Home.
