György Dragomán hosted by Navid Kermani and Terézia Mora

“Rarely in literature are the physical and psychological conditions of a dictatorial regime so nightmarishly portrayed, and to such ambivalently pleasurable effect, as in this splendid book.” Christoph Schröder, Süddeutsche Zeitung about The White King.

György Dragomán was born in 1973 in Transylvania, Romania, as a member of the Hungarian-speaking minority. Since 1988 he has lived in Hungary. Intelligent, brilliant and unrelenting, his books are an adventure for the reader. In his first novel, Genesis Undone (2002), any encounter between two figures soon leads to them beating each other. In The White King (2008) as well, the dictatorship holds sway in its physical and psychological effects – the everyday brutality and malice that we, in nostalgic retrospect, are all too willing to forget. Dragomán goes too far – that is, just far enough. Everything he writes delivers a jolt, and at the same time is so full of enigmatic humour and poetry that it makes one happy despite the dark subject matter.

The next engagements in 2010: Paco I. Taibo (23 March 2010), NN (04 May 2010)

In cooperation with the Cologne Literature House and the Stadtgarten, Cologne , conceived by Guy Helminger, Navid Kermani und Terézia Mora.