Gábor Kálmán: Nova
– Hungary
Gábor Kálmán was born in Nové Zámky/Érsekújvár in Slovakia in 1982 and has lived in Budapest since his high school years. He received the Sándor Bródy Award for the best new book of the year for Nova (2011), a novel developing the epic of the Slovak countryside. The author calls his next book – A temetés (The Funeral, 2016) – an “incomplete historical novel”. Over the course of three days, the protagonist, whose life’s story remains unclear for most of the book, is travelling by train for a funeral. The reader follows him as he walks through the entire train, meeting bizarre fellow travellers and reminiscing about his life and the lives of his ancestors. Kálmán’s recent novel, Janega Kornél szép élete (The Wonderful Life of Kornel Janega , 2018), describes the experience of growing up without a father and a motherland, and of looking for a home.