Little Hungarian Pornography

An extraordinary montage of sex and politics, Peter Esterhazy's innovative novel can be seen to prefigure the liberation of Eastern Europe. Written in 1982 and 1983 under what the author calls "small, Hungarian, pornographic circumstances," A Little Hungarian Pornography exists in a context of official falsehood and misinformation, of lies of the body, the soul, and the state, perpetuated in the duality of language.

Publishers Weekly

Although presented as a novel, this book (completed in 1983) by acclaimed Hungarian author Esterhzy (Book of Hrabal) reads more like a series of journal entries, political jottings and reminiscences. But the fragments are linked by the use of pornography as a metaphor for yielding disgracefully to-and becoming complicit in-oppression. Lascivious acts are made to stand for cowardice, compromise and the mendacious quality of life in the era of Jnos Kdr, Hungary's pro-Russian Communist leader. Images of the body, notably those of seductive, compliant or degraded women, occur frequently as Esterhzy juggles the languages of power (the officialspeak of the state and of those who comply with it) and freedom (sexuality and relief from the lies of words). Figures from Hungarian history-literary, political and mythical-make appearances and are occasionally explained in footnotes. At the end of the book, Esterhzy explains why he writes: ``In short, I write for pleasure, out of fear, for freedom and out of freedom.'' Perhaps that goes as far as anything can toward explaining this book, a strange, often provoking manifesto written with extreme indirection, as if the very idea of clarity itself were obscenely coercive and an affront to the idea of an unfettered self. (Oct.)