Ágota Kristóf

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Ágota Kristóf (born October 30, 1935 in Csikvánd , Hungary, † July 27, 2011 in Neuchâtel ) was a Hungarian - Swiss writer who wrote in French .

Life

Memorial plaque at the Dorothy Kanizsai High School in Szombathely

Ágota Kristóf grew up in the small Hungarian towns of Kőszeg and Szombathely . Her father Kalman Kristóf and her mother Antonia Kristóf, née Turchànyi, were both teachers. Between 1944 and 1954 she attended school in Szombathely and obtained a high school diploma.

In 1956, after the Hungarian uprising was put down , she fled to Switzerland with her husband János Béri, who had been her history teacher until she graduated from high school and with whom she had been married since 1954 and with her four-month-old daughter.

Kristóf found work in a watch factory in Fontainemelon and learned the French language, in which she has been writing her books and radio plays since the 1970s. After five years in exile , she left her first husband, gave up her job in the watch factory and attended lectures at the University of Neuchâtel , where she obtained a diploma from the Séminaire de français moderne in 1963 and married the photographer Jean-Pierre Baillod in the same year.

Kristóf's works, written in a minimalist and ruthless language, have been translated into more than 30 languages. In it she deals with her central themes of writing as a struggle for survival, alienation in exile and the confusion of truth and lies in her native Hungary and in the résumés of her Hungarian compatriots.

She lived in Neuchâtel until her death. Her remains were then transferred to Hungary. Her estate is in the Swiss Literary Archives in Bern .

The Austrian screenwriter Jessica Lind sees herself as influenced by Kristóf.

Awards

The grave of Ágota Kristóf in Kőszeg, taken on August 11, 2014
The grave of Ágota and Attila Kristóf in Köszeg, taken on September 1st, 2016
The grave of Ágota and Attila Kristóf in Kőszeg, taken on September 1st, 2016

Works (selection)

prose

  • Le grand cahier. Le Seuil, Paris 1986
  • La preuve. Le Seuil, Paris 1988
  • Le troisième mensonge. Le Seuil, Paris 1991
    • The third lie. Translated from the French by Erika Tophoven . Piper, Munich / Berlin 1993
  • Here. Le Seuil, Paris 1995
  • L'analphabète. Récit autobiographique. Zoé, Geneva 2004
    • The illiterate. Autobiographical narrative. Translated from the French by Andrea Spingler . Ammann, Zurich 2005
  • Où es-tu Mathias? Zoé, Carouge 2005, ISBN 2-88182-548-6 ( Minizoé 64)
  • C'est égal. Editions du Seuil, Paris 2005
    • Somewhere. Nouvelles. Translated from the French by Carina von Enzenberg. Piper, Munich 2007, ISBN 978-3-492-04871-2

Radio plays

  • The big booklet in an arrangement by Garleff Zacharias-Langhans. Director: Heinz Hostnig. Prod .: BR / SWF, 1989, ISBN 3-89584-871-9
  • The epidemic . Director: Wolfgang Rindfleisch . Prod .: hr, 1996.

Plays

  • L'heure grise et autres pièces , 1998
  • John and Joe
  • Lucas, me and me
  • Monster. Pieces ( John and Joe ; The key to the elevator ; A rat scurries by ; The gray hour ; Monstrosity ; The road ; The epidemic ; The atonement ). Translated from the French by Jacob Arjouni , Carina von Enzenberg, Ursula Grützmacher-Tabori , Eva Moldenhauer, Erika Tophoven. Piper, Munich / Berlin 2010

literature

Web links

Commons : Ágota Kristóf  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Agota Kristof died . NZZ Online , July 27, 2011
  2. ↑ Roger Francillon: Kristof, Agota. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland, Bern. July 28, 2011, accessed February 3, 2019 .
  3. ↑ The candidates for open mike 2015 , October 28, 2015
  4. ↑ Karl Stoppel, In: Agota Kristof: Here . In: Karl Stoppel (Hrsg.): Universal library for foreign language texts . No. 9096 . Reclam-Verlag, Stuttgart 2002, ISBN 3-15-009096-2 , p. 133-139 .
personal data
SURNAME Kristóf, Ágota
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Kristof, Agota
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Hungarian-Swiss writer
DATE OF BIRTH October 30, 1935
PLACE OF BIRTH Csikvánd , Hungary
DATE OF DEATH July 27, 2011
Place of death Neuchâtel , Switzerland