Imre Kertész
| Imre Kertész | |
|---|---|
Imre Kertész in Szeged (2007)
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| Born |
9 November 1929 Budapest, Hungary |
| Died | 31 March 2016 (aged 86) Budapest, Hungary |
| Occupation | Novelist |
| Ethnicity | Hungarian Jewish |
| Notable works |
Fatelessness Kaddish for an Unborn Child Liquidation |
| Notable awards |
Nobel Prize in Literature 2002 |
| Spouse | Albina Vas (d. 1995) Magda Ambrus (m. 1996) |
Imre Kertész (Hungarian: [ˈimrɛ ˈkɛrteːs]; 9 November 1929 – 31 March 2016) was a Hungarian author and recipient of the 2002 Nobel Prize in Literature, "for writing that upholds the fragile experience of the individual against the barbaric arbitrariness of history". He was the first Hungarian to win the Nobel in Literature. His works deal with themes of Nazi Holocaust (he was a survivor of a German concentration camp), dictatorship and personal freedom. He died on 31 March 2016, aged 86, at his home in Budapest after suffering from Parkinson's disease for several years.
Kertész was born in Budapest, Hungary, on 9 November 1929, the son of Aranka Jakab and László Kertész, a bourgeois Jewish couple. After his parents separated when he was around the age of five, Kertész attended a boarding school and, in 1940, he started secondary school where he was put into a special class for Jewish students. During World War II, Kertész was deported in 1944 at the age of 14 with other Hungarian Jews to the Auschwitz concentration camp, and was later sent to Buchenwald. Upon his arrival at the camps, Kertész claimed to be a 16-year old worker, thus saving him from the instant extermination that awaited a 14-year old. After his camp was liberated in 1945, Kertész returned to Budapest, graduated from high school in 1948, and then went on to find work as a journalist and translator. In 1951, he lost his job at the journal Világosság (Clarity) after the publication started leaning towards communism. For a short term he worked as a factory worker and then in the press department of the Ministry of Heavy Industry. From 1953 he started freelance journalism and translated various works into Hungarian, including Friedrich Nietzsche, Sigmund Freud, Ludwig Wittgenstein and Elias Canetti.
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