Zsófia Bán (born September 23, 1957, in

Rio de Janeiro Rio de Janeiro, or simply Rio, is the capital of the Rio de Janeiro (state), state of Rio de Janeiro. It is the List of cities in Brazil by population, second-most-populous city in Brazil (after São Paulo) and the Largest cities in the America ...

, Brazil) is a writer, literary historian, essayist and art and literature critic.

Personal life

Zsófia Bán grew up in Rio de Janeiro as the child of Jewish parents. In 1969, she and her family returned to

Hungary Hungary is a landlocked country in Central Europe. Spanning much of the Pannonian Basin, Carpathian Basin, it is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine to the northeast, Romania to the east and southeast, Serbia to the south, Croatia and ...

where she studied English language and Literature as well as

Romance Studies Romance studies or Romance philology (; ; ; ; ; ; ) is an academic discipline that covers the study of the languages, literatures, and cultures of areas that speak Romance languages. Romance studies departments usually include the study of Spa ...

Budapest Budapest is the Capital city, capital and List of cities and towns of Hungary, most populous city of Hungary. It is the List of cities in the European Union by population within city limits, tenth-largest city in the European Union by popul ...

(1976–1981),

Lisbon Lisbon ( ; ) is the capital and largest city of Portugal, with an estimated population of 567,131, as of 2023, within its administrative limits and 3,028,000 within the Lisbon Metropolitan Area, metropolis, as of 2025. Lisbon is mainlan ...

Minneapolis Minneapolis is a city in Hennepin County, Minnesota, United States, and its county seat. With a population of 429,954 as of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, it is the state's List of cities in Minnesota, most populous city. Locat ...

and

New Brunswick New Brunswick is a Provinces and Territories of Canada, province of Canada, bordering Quebec to the north, Nova Scotia to the east, the Gulf of Saint Lawrence to the northeast, the Bay of Fundy to the southeast, and the U.S. state of Maine to ...

. She has worked in film studios, curated art exhibitions, was a fellow at the

Hungarian Academy of Sciences The Hungarian Academy of Sciences ( , MTA) is Hungary’s foremost and most prestigious learned society. Its headquarters are located along the banks of the Danube in Budapest, between Széchenyi rakpart and Akadémia utca. The Academy's primar ...

and at the John-F.-Kennedy-Institut in Berlin, a Fulbright Fellow at

Harvard University Harvard University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1636 and named for its first benefactor, the History of the Puritans in North America, Puritan clergyma ...

, as well as a writer-in-residence in

Zug Zug (Standard German: , Alemannic German: ; ; ; ; )Named in the 16th century. is the largest List of cities in Switzerland, town and capital of the Swiss canton of Zug. Zug is renowned as a hub for some of the wealthiest individuals in the wor ...

, Switzerland, among other residencies. From August 2015 to July 2016 Bán was a writer-in-residence at the DAAD (

German Academic Exchange Service The German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD; ), founded in 1925, is a joint organization of German universities and student bodies to foster their international relations. Since 1 January 2020, the president has been Joybrato Mukherjee. Organisa ...

) Artists-in-Berlin Program. She lives and works in

, where she was an associate professor of American Studies at the School of English and American Studies of the Faculty of Humanities of the

Eötvös Loránd University Eötvös Loránd University (, ELTE, also known as ''University of Budapest'') is a Hungarian public research university based in Budapest. Founded in 1635, ELTE is one of the largest and most prestigious public higher education institutions in ...

. She is now a freelance writer.

Writing

Zsófia Bán's writing often addresses topics related to visuality,

visual arts The visual arts are art forms such as painting, drawing, printmaking, sculpture, ceramics (art), ceramics, photography, video, image, filmmaking, design, crafts, and architecture. Many artistic disciplines such as performing arts, conceptual a ...

photography Photography is the visual arts, art, application, and practice of creating images by recording light, either electronically by means of an image sensor, or chemically by means of a light-sensitive material such as photographic film. It is empl ...

, personal and

cultural memory Culture ( ) is a concept that encompasses the social behavior, institutions, and norms found in human societies, as well as the knowledge, beliefs, arts, laws, customs, capabilities, attitudes, and habits of the individuals in these gro ...

, historical trauma, as well as

gender Gender is the range of social, psychological, cultural, and behavioral aspects of being a man (or boy), woman (or girl), or third gender. Although gender often corresponds to sex, a transgender person may identify with a gender other tha ...

. She has written a number of essays related to the topic of literature and visuality, including those on

W.G. Sebald Winfried Georg Sebald (18 May 1944 – 14 December 2001), known as W. G. Sebald or (as he preferred) Max Sebald, was a German writer and academic. At the time of his death at the age of 57, he was according to ''The New Yorker'' ”widely recog ...

Susan Sontag Susan Lee Sontag (; January 16, 1933 – December 28, 2004) was an American writer, critic, and public intellectual. She mostly wrote essays, but also published novels; she published her first major work, the essay "Notes on "Camp", Notes on 'Ca ...

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 ...

and

Péter Nádas Péter Nádas (born 14 October 1942) is a Hungarian writer, playwright, and essayist. Biography He was born in Budapest into a Jewish family, the son of László Nádas (originally Nussbaum) and Klára Tauber. After the takeover of the Hung ...

. Her short stories and essays have been widely anthologized, and translated to a number of languages, including German, English, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Slovakian and Slovenian.

Bibliography

Fiction

*''Lehet lélegezni!, Budapest,

Magvető Magvető is a Hungarian book publishing company based in Budapest. It primarily publishes domestic and international works of literary fiction. History Magvető was established in 1955 as a publisher of the Magyar Írók Szövetsége (now the ...

, 2018.'' **''Weiter atmen'', übersetzt von Terézia Mora. Berlin, Suhrkamp Verlag, 2020. . *''Amikor még csak az állatok éltek'', Magvető, Budapest 2012. **''Als nur die Tiere lebten'', translated by

Terézia Mora Terézia Mora (; born 5 February 1971) is a German Hungarian writer, screenwriter and translator. Early life and education Terézia Mora was born in Sopron, Hungary, to a family with German roots and grew up bilingual. She moved to Germany a ...

, Berlin, Suhrkamp Verlag, 2014. *''Esti iskola – Olvasókönyv felnőtteknek'', Budapest/ Bratislava, 2007. **''Abendschule – Eine Fibel für Erwachsene'', translated by Terézia Mora, Suhrkamp Verlag, Berlin, 2012. **''Escuela nocturna – Manual de lectura para adultos'', translated by José Miguel González Trevejo, Ediciones Siruela, Madrid, 2015. **''Night School: A Reader for Grownups,'' translated by Jim Tucker. Open Letter Books, Rochester, 2019.

Children’s literature

*''Vagánybagoly és a negyedik Á avagy mindenki láthat mást'' (Tuffy Owl and Class Four A or Everyone Can See Differently), 2021. *''Vagánybagoly és a harmadik Á avagy mindenki lehet más'' (Tuffy Owl and Class Three A or Everyone Can be Different), 2019.

Non-fiction

*''Der Sommer unsres Missvergnügens'' (essays on memory, history and visuality), Matthes & Seitz/DAAD, Berlin, 2019. *''Turul és dínó'' (The Turul Bird and the Dino – essays on the visual representation of historical memory), Magvető, Budapest, 2016. *''Exponált Emlék – Családi képek a magán- és közösségi emlékezetben'', ed. Zsófia Bán and Hedvig Turai, AICA/Argumentum, Budapest, 2008. **''Exposed Memory: Family Pictures in Private and Collective Memory'', AICA-CEU Press, Budapest, 2010. *''Próbacsomagolás'' (Test Packing, essays), Kalligram, Budapest/Bratislava, 2008. *''Amerikáner: A huszadik századi amerikai irodalom és mûvészet kultikus darabjai'' (Cult Works in American Literature and Art, essays), Magvető, Budapest, 2000. *''Desire and De-Scription: Words and Images of Postmodernism in the Late Poetry of William Carlos Williams'', Amsterdam, Rodopi, 1999. Zsófia Bán also regularly publishes critical pieces on literature and visual art, as well as op-eds in magazines and newspapers.

Prizes

*2021: Spycher: Literature Award Leuk *2020: Best Children's Book of the Year Prize (Children's Jury) *2018: Acquisition Award, LOOP Barcelona Video Festival (co-created with Péter Forgács) *2014:

International Literature Award International Literature Award (''German'': Internationaler Literaturpreis – Haus der Kulturen der Welt) is a German literary award for international prose translated into German for the first time.Attila József Prize The Attila József Prize is an annually awarded Hungarian literary prize for excellence in the field of belles-lettres. It was first presented in 1950 in honour of the poet Attila József. Another major Hungarian literary prize is the Kossuth Prize. ...

*2007: Balassa Péter Prize

Links

Zsófia Bán – Official Website with selected publication list
(Hungarian and English)
Hungarian publishing house

Zsófia Bán at the Berlin International Literature Festival 2015American Version of ''Night School''Review of ''Night School'' at ''Kirkus Review''Review of ''Night School'' at ''The Arkansas International''American Publishing HouseA Night of Philosophy and Ideas

Spycher Prize 2021 awarded to Zsófia Bán
{{DEFAULTSORT:Ban, Zsofia 20th-century Hungarian novelists 21st-century Hungarian novelists Writers from Rio de Janeiro (city) Writers from Budapest 1957 births Hungarian literary critics Hungarian women novelists Living people Academic staff of Eötvös Loránd University Hungarian women literary critics 20th-century Hungarian women writers 21st-century Hungarian women writers Attila József Prize recipients