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Hungarian literature: where to start?

  Tags: Hungarian | Literature
 Language Learning Forum : Books, Literature & Reading Post Reply
gaggilla
Tetraglot
Newbie
Switzerland
Joined 5005 days ago

18 posts - 28 votes
Speaks: German*, French, English, Romanian
Studies: Icelandic, Persian, Hungarian, Danish

 
 Message 1 of 4
06 August 2013 at 11:27am | IP Logged 
Hello everyone,

so I've been studying Hungarian for some time now and I think I might just be at the point where reading literature, while still hard, might get enjoyable. So, basically I'm just interested in fiction of any kind; I'm not afraid of taking long to read a page - I am, however, afraid of taking long to read 400 pages, so I'm not looking for epic novels. I think up to about 200 pages will be manageable. Of course, collections of short stories would be wonderful, too.
Do you have any ideas? Which Hungarian writers have an easier style to understand for non-native speakers compared to others? Who uses a more narrow vocabulary, whose sentences aren't all too long? Any recommandations will be welcome. In German, usually the classics are my taste, but in foreign languages, it's more about getting used to reading the language for me combined with an interesting story, especially in the beginning.

Thank you :)
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jeff_lindqvist
Diglot
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SwedenRegistered users can see my Skype Name
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4250 posts - 5711 votes 
Speaks: Swedish*, English
Studies: German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Irish, French
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 Message 2 of 4
06 August 2013 at 7:07pm | IP Logged 
Professor Arguelles has the following titles on the list of Great books:
Balassi, Bálint baron of Kékk and Gyarmat (1554-1594) : Poetry
Pázmány, Péter (1570-1637) : Guide to Truth
Zrínyi, Miklós (1620–1664) : The Peril of Sziget
Arany, János (1817-1882) : Ballads
Jókai, Mór (1825-1904) : The Man with the Golden Touch, The Heartless Man's Sons, Eyes like the Sea, The novel of the next century
Madách, Imre (1823-1864) : The Tragedy of Man
Petőfi, Sándor (1823-1849) : Selected Poetry

Maybe forum member Chung has something else to suggest.
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Josquin
Heptaglot
Senior Member
Germany
Joined 4832 days ago

2266 posts - 3992 votes 
Speaks: German*, English, French, Latin, Italian, Russian, Swedish
Studies: Japanese, Irish, Portuguese, Persian

 
 Message 3 of 4
06 August 2013 at 9:14pm | IP Logged 
I'd recommend Sándor Márai. I read "Embers" by him in German and it was great. The Hungarian title is "A gyertyák csonkig égnek".

Unfortunately, I don't know whether it will be an easy read in Hungarian or not.
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gaggilla
Tetraglot
Newbie
Switzerland
Joined 5005 days ago

18 posts - 28 votes
Speaks: German*, French, English, Romanian
Studies: Icelandic, Persian, Hungarian, Danish

 
 Message 4 of 4
10 August 2013 at 5:58pm | IP Logged 
Thank you both! The Márai book sounds interesting, I'm going check it out! I don't know about the classics yet, I think for my first few books I'm going to stick with relatively contemporary writers, so as to learn some more modern vocabulary first (I even tend to get strange looks when using some of the words from the 60s FSI course, so I'm not sure what they'll say if I start talking like Petőfi :) )


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