''Kaddish for an Unborn Child'' ( hu, Kaddis a meg nem született gyermekért) is a novel by

Imre Kertész Imre Kertész (; 9 November 192931 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 ...

, first published in

1990 File:1990 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: The 1990 FIFA World Cup is played in Italy; The Human Genome Project is launched; Voyager I takes the famous Pale Blue Dot image- speaking on the fragility of humanity on Earth, astrophysicist ...

(). The novel deals with the struggles of a

Holocaust The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe; ...

survivor after the war, explaining to a friend why he cannot bring a child into a world that could allow such atrocities to happen. The book also deals with the narrator's failed marriage, his unsuccessful literary career, and the concept of his

Jewishness Jewish peoplehood (Hebrew: עמיות יהודית, ''Amiut Yehudit'') is the conception of the awareness of the underlying unity that makes an individual a part of the Jewish people. The concept of peoplehood has a double meaning. The first is d ...

. Kertész won the

Nobel Prize for Literature ) , image = Nobel Prize.png , caption = , awarded_for = Outstanding contributions in literature , presenter = Swedish Academy , holder = Annie Ernaux (2022) , location = Stockholm, Sweden , year = 1901 , ...

in 2002 "for writing that upholds the fragile experience of the individual against the barbaric arbitrariness of history".

English translations

*''Kaddish for an Unborn Child'', tr. Tim Wilkinson, 2004, *''Kaddish for a Child Not Born'', tr. Christopher C. Wilson and Katharina M. Wilson, 1999, 1990 novels Hungarian novels Novels about the aftermath of the Holocaust {{1990s-Holocaust-novel-stub