Attila Bartis

(b.1968) has published three novels: A séta [The stroll] Budapest: József Attila Kör 1995, published in German translation as Der Spaziergang, Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp 1999; A kékl? pára [The bluish haze] Budapest: Magvetö 1998; and, A nyugalom [Resting], Budapest: Magvetö 2001, published in German as Die Ruhe, Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp 2005. The latter has been adapted for stage and film.

Articles

Resting

Excerpt

Andor Weér, a writer, is the son of the eccentric actress Rebeka We�r, who fifteen years ago was removed from her position in the state theatre by the Communist authorities, in punishment for her daughter’s defection. Since then she has not left the flat she shares with her son, whose life she tyrannizes in revenge for her daughter’s “treachery”. Attila Bartis’s Resting (2001) portrays a consciousness for which “rest” is unattainable; both private psychodrama and portrait of the end of the Communist era, it is one of the darkest novels to have emerged from contemporary Hungarian literature.