The 2002 Nobel Literature Prize winner died this morning aged 86 at his home in Budapest. He had been ill for some time. One of Europe's best stylists in the novella form, his work drew on his own experiences as a teenage Holocaust survivor and beyond.
Written between 1960 and 1973, his first novella "Fateless" was rejected for publication at first by Communist censors and was finally released in 1975, but was largely ignored in Hungary despite the 500,000 Hungarian Jews being killed by the Nazis.
It would be fair to say that Kertesz had a tempestuous relationship with the Hungarian state both before and after the regime changes in 1989. He was a noted critic of the current administration. However, his talent was not limited to painful descriptions of murder. His novella "Union Jack" set during the Hungarian Uprising in 1956 and featuring the flag of the Her Majesty's Ambassador's car right at the end of the narrative is one of the finest and funniest satires to emerge from central Europe. Your correspondent will read some of that novella this evening.
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