Fényudvar

by Herold, Ágnes

The volume contains two short novels. A girl is born in Budapest, Hungary in the 1970s, the socialist era, into freedom (no obligatory, crippling religion) and into safety (everyone has a job). When she is 24, she writes this novel based on her personal memories and that of her parents’ and grandparent’s. WWII, 1956, the 1960s appear embedded into her photographs about Budapest – in associative order. We learn how she become a pioneer, learnt Russian, how she discovered vaginal pleasures (yes, that is what women call sex in Hungary), boys, men, love, how she got fascinated with Russian culture and how she experienced the wind of change – which was believed to be the wind of hope once. The other girl witnesses her old district being torn down, people loosing their jobs and her favorite places in the city getting old and derelict. Then she goes into the Budapest night, fascinated: it is men, again, who mean a real comfort to her in a world where she has to admit: network marketing strate