László Darvasi: Nothing post-modern
– Hungary
László Darvasi is a poet, writer, dramatist, journalist, editor and a teacher born in 1962. In 1986, he earned a degree from the Juhász Gyula Faculty of Education in Szeged. Between 1990 and 1998, he edited the Pompeji magazine and is currently a staff member of the Élet és Irodalom (Life and Literature) weekly. He published his first poetry collection in 1991, but later presented himself as a short-prose writer. He became widely known in 1999 when he published his first novel, A könnymutatványosok legendája (The Legend of the Tear-Grifters), which to this day remains one of his most controversial.Ordinary readers as well as literary critics praised its colourful plot, the wide scope of storytelling, as well as the fact that the author returned a story to the Hungarian novel in a major way.In the novel Virágzabálók (Flower Devourers, 2009), he composes a Hungarian and a Central European epic.The story takes place in the 19th century in Szeged, where Hungarians, Germans, Serbs, Jews and Gypsies all live alongside each other.A Czech audiobook version of the short-story collection The World's Happiest Orchestra was released in 2008.