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9781501791062 Academic Inspection Copy

Literature of Absence

Remembering and Forgetting the Holocaust in Postwar Hungary
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Literature of Absence explores the literary representations of wartime atrocities and the Holocaust in Hungary from 1945 to the late 1950s. In the immediate aftermath of World War II, survivor accounts, diverse in genre, perspective, and literary value, came to light as testimonies, novels and short stories, anthologies, and stage plays. These accounts appeared predominantly during the first three postwar years but diminished in frequency thereafter. The absence reinforced a preconception that still persists today, that there was a general silence about the Holocaust in postwar Hungary. Tamas Kisantal resolves this absence with a critical examination of the first survivor testimonies, humor in early Holocaust writings, the notion of the "martyr writer," and the challenges of addressing and representing Hungarian responsibility-not only that of former politicians and leaders, but also that of ordinary people. Ultimately, Literature of Absence examines how the recent past was represented within the framework of anti-Fascist literature and how certain works attempted to transcend these generic and ideological constraints in order to articulate their own approach to the Hungarian Holocaust.
Tamas Kisantal is Associate Professor of literary theory and history at University of Pecs, Hungary and focuses on narrative aspects of historical writing, problems of the historical novel, and artistic representations of the Holocaust. He is the author of three books in Hungarian, including Tulelo toertenetek, Az elet tanitomesterei, and Az emlekezet es a felejtes helyei.
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