Ferenc Contra
Ferenc Kontra (born June 18, 1958 in Draž , Croatia ) is a Hungarian writer and journalist . He lives in Novi Sad .
Life
Kontra was born in 1958 in Draž (Darázs), a small village near Eszék (Osijek) in northeastern Croatia. This is also where his first novel, Drávaszögi keresztek (“Drauwinkler Kreuze”, 1988) takes place, in which he tells the family story of his mother. Kontra attended elementary and middle school in his native Croatia, after which he continued his education in Hungary. He attended the Lajos-Nagy-Gymnasium in Pécs . He later addressed the story of boarding school students commuting across the border in his novel Gimnazisták (“Gymnasiasten”, 2002), which is set against the background of the Kádár and Tito regimes of the 1970s. The novel was a great success in Hungary and is now required reading in middle schools.
Kontra studied English and Hungarian Philology at the University of Szeged , then returned to Croatia and from 1983 worked in the culture department of the Osijek weekly newspaper Magyar Képes Ujság (Hungarian Illustrated). In 1987 he moved to Novi Sad (Serbia) and worked for the Új Symposion (New Symposion) magazine until 1991. Then he moved to the feature section of the local daily Magyar Szó (Hungarian word). Today he is deputy editor-in-chief of this newspaper and publisher of the weekly literature supplement.
Literary work
His first volume of poetry Jelenések (“Revelations”) was published in 1984 in Osijek. He found broader recognition with his second volume of poetry, Fehér tükrök (“White Mirror”, 1986), which was awarded the Sinkó Prize. In the following twenty years he mainly wrote prose and published seven volumes of short stories and six novels in the Hungarian language . His stories were translated into German (Wolkenbruch, Father's geography), English (River of No Return), Polish (Geografia mego ojca, Zabójstwo z powodu jogurtu, Oberwanie chmury), Romanian (Cine a injunghiat cainele in Messkirch?), Ins French (La passé est terminé - Il n'y a pas d'historie) and translated into Serbian (Svetlosna kazuistika, Nigde na svetu).
In the Voivodina, his collection of novels Nagy a sátán birodalma (“Great is the kingdom of Satan”, 1991) was awarded the Szirmai and the prose volume Gyilkosság a yoghurt miatt (“Murder because of yoghurt”, 1998) with the Híd Prize . Both volumes lead the reader to the public and private theaters of war of the Yugoslav collapse and focus particularly on the little-noticed fate of the Hungarian minority that got caught between the fronts.
Kontra received a grant from the Budapest Copyright Association Artisjus in 1995 for the prose volume Úgy törnel el (“So break them”). The story contained therein Apa helyén ("On Father's Place") served as a template for a television play of the same name. In 2001 Kontra won the 1st Hungarian Dramatists Competition in the Voivodina. As a scholarship holder of the manor house Edenkoben (Rhineland-Palatinate) he wrote the essay novel A kastély kutyái ("The dogs from the castle", 2003). Vienna beyond the tracks - the story is told by Ludwig Wien Landsteiner, known as Wian, who learns of a terrible tragedy on the cover of a Viennese tabloid. When he recognizes his former school friend in the photo, memories of childhood are awakened, of the former soccer team, of the world beyond the tracks in which he grew up and which he believed he had long forgotten. He had taken the path over the tracks to better Vienna. This was ensured by his mother, who came to Austria as a guest worker and wanted to turn her son, who was born here, into a real Viennese. By describing the origin and childhood of his protagonist and tracing the reasons for his friend's tragedy, Kontra also paints a colorful picture of the city of Vienna and its different faces. After “High School Students” and “The Hour of the Wolves”, the author concludes a trilogy with Vienna Beyond the Rails. The three novels deal with questions of one's own identity, origin, dealing with the world of fathers and, last but not least, friendship, which Kontra more than once sets a wonderful monument. In Hungary, the book won him the Elle magazine readers' award.
“Ferenc Kontra is one of the few authors who have an innate talent for writing; he knows how to write, he has a sense of proportion, an unmistakable style and there is hardly a page that you do not have to read to the end: his sentences interlock with a smooth, trustworthy directness and are still airy enough to cover that dark To give space to irony, which is indispensable when looking back on things with a certain temporal distance. "
“I look at the structure of the novel“ Grammar School Students ”and have the impression that it is very consciously and massively constructed; but that doesn't bother me while reading. Only after reading did I notice that I had read a construction, a system of landmarks. The blue roof of the Pécs mosque, for example, is such a point for those who have seen it from their boarding school window for four years. Somehow it belonged in the everyday life of the boarding school students. This blue dome appears systematically in the text, but only in retrospect did I realize that it was there all along and that it was blue. And I still have the paradoxical feeling that this novel is more beautiful than it is. In addition, of unconditional honesty: I believe against every word. "
Awards
- 1987 Ervin Sinkó Prize
- 1992 Károly Szirmai Prize
- 1994 Zsigmond Móricz scholarship
- 1995 Artisjus scholarship
- 1997 Holmi Literature Prize for the best story
- 1998 Híd Prize
- 2000 Scholarship from the Herrenhaus Edenkoben (Germany)
- 2001 Winner of the First Hungarian Drama Competition in Vojvodina
- 2011 NKA scholarship
- 2013 Sándor Márai Prize
- 2014 Attila József Prize
Works
- 1984 Jelenések (revelations, poems)
- 1986 Fehér tükrök (White Mirrors, Poems)
- 1988 Drávaszögi keresztek (Drauwinkler Kreuze, novel)
- 1991 Nagy a sátán birodalma (Great is the kingdom of Satan, stories)
- 1993 Ősök jussán (As inherited, short stories)
- 1993 Holtak országa (Land of the Dead, Stories)
- 1993 Kalendárium (Calendar, Childhood Stories)
- 1995 Úgy törnek el (This is how they break, novel)
- 1996 A halász fiai (The fisherman's sons, youth novel)
- 1998 Gyilkosság a yoghurt miatt (murder because of yoghurt, prose)
- 2002 Gimnazisták (high school students, novel)
- 2002 A kastély kutyái, egy utazás fejezetei (The dogs from the castle. Chapter of a journey)
- 2003 Farkasok órája (The Hour of Wolves, novel)
- 2006 Wien a sínen túl (Vienna beyond the tracks, Roman)
- 2007 Szélördög és más mesék (Wind devil and other stories)
- 2008 Drávaszögi keresztek II. (Drauwinkler Kreuze II, novel)
- 2011 Horvátország magyar irodalma (Hungarian literature in Croatia, literary history)
- 2013 Idegen (The Stranger, novel)
- 2014 Angyalok regénye (The story of the angel, novel)
- 2017 Életkörök (The Circles of Life, novel)
- 2018 Az álom hídja (The Bridge of Dreams, novel)
Web links
- Homepage of Ferenc Kontra
- Literature by and about Ferenc Kontra Herrenhaus, Edenkoben, 2000
- Hungarian Minority in Croatia Book Fair, Leipzig, 2008
- My stories have been translated to Polish, German, English, French and Romanian Short Story Festival, Wrocław, 2011
- Ferenc Kontra at hunlit.hu (Hungarian)
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Cons, Ferenc |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Hungarian writer and journalist |
| DATE OF BIRTH | June 18, 1958 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Darázs , Croatia |