Remembering Szilárd Borbély

February 19, 2024 marks 10 years since the tragic passing of Szilárd Borbély. Borbély began publishing poetry in the 1980s, and came to be recognised as one of Hungary's premier poets. In 2013, he released his novel The Dispossessed. Drawing heavily on his own childhood experiences, it depicts the poverty and cruelty experienced by a partly Jewish family living in rural Hungary in the 1960s and 1970s, and has since been translated into some 15 languages. Suhrkamp also published his prose work Kafka's Son, a posthumous collection of fragmentary texts documenting Borbély's search to find himself and his own literary voice, filtered through Kafka's oeuvre. Having struggled with depression for years, Borbély took his own life on 19 February 2014. 

For more information about The Dispossessed or Kafka's Son, contact the foreign rights manager for you region.