NARRATIVES AND FRAGMENTS: IMRE KERTÉSZ AND LÁSZLÓ MÁRTON
NARRATIVES AND FRAGMENTS: IMRE KERTÉSZ AND LÁSZLÓ MÁRTON

Summary/Abstract: In this essay, I interpret two Hungarian novels from the field of Holocaust literature concentrating upon the problems of representation. I argue that neither Kertész nor Márton can avoid facing the question whether the challenges of remembering and representation can be bound and reflected in a literary form. Past events are repeatedly narrated in present tense in both novels. For Márton, the fragments of narration do not constitute a story, and the invasion of imaginative elements provokes the conventional frames of depicting historical facts in an epistemological horizon. On the other hand, in Fateless storytelling emphasises the inconceivable character of the Holocaust, and Kertész’s work sheds light on philosophical paradoxes beyond epistemology. In this sense these two novels prove to be different but connected forms of Holocaust literature.

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