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  Newsmakers   Hungary’s leading author dies at 66

Hungary’s leading author dies at 66

AFP
Published : Jul 16, 2016, 1:59 am IST
Updated : Jul 16, 2016, 1:59 am IST

Novelist Peter Esterhazy, widely regarded as a leading figure of 20th century Hungarian literature, has died aged 66 after a long battle with pancreatic cancer, his publisher said Thursday.

Novelist Peter Esterhazy, widely regarded as a leading figure of 20th century Hungarian literature, has died aged 66 after a long battle with pancreatic cancer, his publisher said Thursday.

His works, many of which examined aspects of life under a Communist regime, were translated into more than 20 languages.

“The family and Magveto Publishing info-rm with deep sorrow that in the afternoon hours of July 14, 2016, Peter Esterhazy passed away,” said the publisher’s head Krisztian Nyary in a statement sent to the MTI news agency.

“It is difficult to imagine Hungarian literature or public life without him, he was such an important part of both, particularly in the later decades of the 20th century,” Nyary told AFP.

Esterhazy was born in 1950 into a Hungarian aristocratic family dispossessed of its wealth by the communist regime that came to power in Hungary in 1948.

A qualified mathematician, he worked for four years in the ministry of industry in the 1970s before devoting his energies to literature.

He is best known for his Harmonia Caelestis novel (2000) which traces his family history from the period of the Austro-Hungarian empire to its persecution under communism. In 2005, he published a new version of Harmonia Caelestis titled Revised Edition after he discovered that his father was an informer for the Communist-era secret police.

Location: Hungary, Budapest