Holocaust experience, totalitarianism and the problem of meaning are handled with deliberate emotional distance in Imre Kertész’s fiction. Fatelessness follows the teenage György Köves after deportation from Budapest to Auschwitz and Buchenwald, using a cool, almost literal perspective that refuses the expected language of retrospective heroism. Kaddish for an Unborn Child takes the form of an extended refusal by a Holocaust survivor who cannot imagine becoming a father, while Liquidation turns to writers and survivors in post-communist Budapest. Kertész’s prose is controlled, philosophical and often uncomfortable in its emotional distance. The most useful neighbouring categories are Holocaust literature, Hungarian fiction, survivor writing and existential post-war literature. Read more Less
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