''Satantango'' ( hu, Sátántangó, tr. "Satan's Tango") is a 1985 novel by the Hungarian writer

László Krasznahorkai László Krasznahorkai (; born 5 January 1954) is a Hungarian novelist and screenwriter known for difficult and demanding novels, often labeled postmodern, with dystopian and melancholic themes. Several of his works, including his novels '' S ...

. It is Krasznahorkai's

debut novel A debut novel is the first novel a novelist publishes. Debut novels are often the author's first opportunity to make an impact on the publishing industry, and thus the success or failure of a debut novel can affect the ability of the author to p ...

. It was adapted into a widely acclaimed seven-hour film, ''

Sátántangó ''Sátántangó'' (; meaning ' Satan's Tango') is a 1994 drama film directed by Hungarian filmmaker Béla Tarr. Shot in black-and-white and running for more than seven hours, it is based on the 1985 novel of the same name by Hungarian novelist ...

'' (1994), directed by

Béla Tarr Béla Tarr (born 21 July 1955) is a Hungarian filmmaker. Debuting with the film ''Family Nest'' (1977), Tarr began his directorial career with a brief period of what he refers to as "social cinema", aimed at telling everyday stories about ordin ...

. The English translation by

George Szirtes George Szirtes (; born 29 November 1948) is a British poet and translator from the Hungarian language into English. Originally from Hungary, he has lived in the United Kingdom for most of his life after coming to the country as a refugee at the ...

won the

Best Translated Book Award The Best Translated Book Award is an American literary award that recognizes the previous year's best original translation into English, one book of poetry and one of fiction. It was inaugurated in 2008 and is conferred by Three Percent, the onlin ...

(2013).

Plot

The novel is a postmodernist piece, and while it has a plot, many details are not outlined and remain unclear. It consists of two parts, and each part consists of six sections; sections of the second part are numbered in reverse order. Every chapter is a long paragraph which does not contain line breaks. Most of the action occurs in a run-down Hungarian village ("estate") which is in a vicinity of an unnamed town but the inhabitants are almost isolated from the outside world. The main character, Irimiás, a con man posing as a savior, arrives at the estate, achieves an almost unlimited power over the inhabitants, gets them to give him all their hard-earned money, convinces them to move to another abandoned “estate” nearby, and then brings them to the town, where he disperses them around the country. The purpose of the whole exercise is to give Irimiás money and power.

Reception

Jacob Silverman of ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...

'' reviewed the book in 2012, and wrote that it "shares many of rasznahorkais later novels' thematic concerns — the abeyance of time, an apocalyptic sense of crisis and decay — but it's an altogether more digestible work. Its story skips around in perspective and temporality, but the narrative is rarely unclear. For a writer whose characters often exhibit a claustrophobic interiority, Krasznahorkai also shows himself to be unexpectedly expansive and funny here." Theo Tait in ''

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Gu ...

'' praised the novel and, in particular, said that it is "possessed of a distinctive, compelling vision". He noted that there is influence of

Franz Kafka Franz Kafka (3 July 1883 – 3 June 1924) was a German-speaking Bohemian novelist and short-story writer, widely regarded as one of the major figures of 20th-century literature. His work fuses elements of realism and the fantastic. It ...

and Samuel Beckett visible in the novel.

External links

Review from The Guardian

Review from The LA Review of Books

References

{{László Krasznahorkai 1985 novels Hungarian novels Works by László Krasznahorkai Postmodern novels Magvető books

Plot

Reception

External links

See also

References