Hungarian writer
Istvan Gyorgy Orkeny
(5 April 1912,
Budapest
? 24 June 1979, Budapest) was a Hungarian writer whose plays and novels often featured grotesque situations. He was a recipient of the
Kossuth Prize
in 1973.
Biography
[
edit
]
He was born to a wealthy Jewish family, his father Hugo was the owner of a
pharmacy
in Budapest. He graduated from the
Piarist Gymnasium
[
hu
]
in 1930 and enrolled at the
Budapest University of Technology and Economics
where he studied chemistry. Two years later, he chose to specialize in pharmacology and received his degree in that subject in 1934.
[1]
In 1937, he became associated with the journal
Szep Szo
[
hu
]
and began traveling; to London and Paris, where he held several odd jobs. He returned to Budapest in 1940 and completed his degree in chemical engineering. He published his first book,
Ocean Dance
, in 1941. In 1942, he was sent to the
Russian Front
on the
Don River
. Due to his Judaism, he was placed in a forced-labor unit. There he was captured and detained in a
labour camp
near
Moscow
, where he wrote the play
Voronesh
. In 1946, he returned home to Budapest.
After 1949, he worked as a
dramaturge
at the Youth Theater and, after 1951, as a playwright at the People's Army Theater. In 1954, he began working as an editor for
Szepirodalmi Publishing
[
hu
]
. He was prohibited from publishing after the
Revolution
and worked as a chemical engineer at
United Pharmaceuticals
[
hu
]
until 1963.
His most famous work,
The Toth Family
, is about a man who is driven to the verge of insanity and murders the guest his family was having.
He was married three times. His second wife,
Angela Nagy
[
hu
]
was a cookbook writer. They were married from 1948 to 1959. His third wife,
Zsuzsa Radnoti
[
hu
]
was a prize-winning dramaturge. They were married in 1965.
He died of heart failure in 1979 and was buried in
Farkasreti Cemetery
. In 2004, the
Madach
Chamber Theatre in Budapest was renamed the Orkeny Theater in his honour.
Works
[
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]
- Ocean Dance
- Voronezh
- Macskajatek
(Catsplay)
- Totek
(The Tot Family)
- One Minute Stories
(
Valogatott egyperces novellak
)
References
[
edit
]
Further reading
[
edit
]
- Orkeny, Istvan.
One Minute Stories
, selected and translated by Judith Sollosy. Budapest: Corvina, 1995.
ISBN
963-13-4783-4
.
- Orkeny, Istvan.
More One Minute Stories
, selected and translated by Judith Sollosy, preface by Peter Esterhazy. Budapest: Corvina, 2006.
ISBN
963-13-5523-3
.
External links
[
edit
]
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