Ferenc Czinki: A chronicler of pubs
– Hungary
Born in 1982, Ferenc Czinki is an author, editor, critic, literary event organiser and a vice-chairman of Szépírók Társasága (Society of Hungarian Authors). He has published his texts in a number of important weeklies and literary magazines. His first collection titled Egy kocsma város (A Pub City, 2014) combines elements of fiction and journalism, telling a story of one city through the perspective of its pubs. The novel A pozsonyi metró (The Bratislava Metro, 2017) was inspired by his stay in the eponymous city on a creative scholarship, where the story and structure of the book was created literally during walks through the streets of Bratislava. The mysterious story told via two parallel timelines, one set in the late 1970s and the early 1980s, the other in the year 2014, depicts the past and the present of an urban periphery in the European “Mideast”. “Naturally, in both my novels, I am preoccupied by the East European or East-Central European mementos, leftovers of the former world order. The non-existent Bratislava metro is a wonderful example of this,” said Czinki about his work.