Books by translated by George Szirtes
The Melancholy of Resistance
by László Krasznahorkai & translated by George Szirtes
The Melancholy of Resistance (1989) was the first novel by Hungarian novelist and Nobel laureate László Krasznahorkai to be translated into English, published in 1998. Author Ellen Mattson, a member of the Swedish Academy that decides the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, called it "my absolute favourite among Krasznahorkai's novels." Set in a village in the Carpathians, the story revolves around a circus coming to town with what it advertises as "the biggest whale in the world and other sensational secrets of nature."
Satantango
by László Krasznahorkai & translated by George Szirtes
Satantango (1985) is the debut novel of Hungarian novelist László Krasznahorkai, and possibly his most accessible. The novel is relatively short—fewer than 300 pages—but the sentences (and paragraphs) are long, and it took a decade or so to translate. Set on a decaying collective farm, when it was published in English in 2012, the Guardian called it "brutal, relentless and so amazingly bleak that it's often quite funny." It also hailed it as "an obviously brilliant novel." It was also turned into a 7+ hour movie, directed by Béla Tarr.
Interviews where books by translated by George Szirtes were recommended
Award-Winning Novels of 2025, recommended by Cal Flyn
What are the most highly acclaimed novels of the year? We asked Five Books deputy editor Cal Flyn to put together a summary of award-winning fiction of 2025—novels that won major literary prizes in the English-speaking world—as one answer to this impossible question.
