A 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 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. In a state where the lack of democracy was called socialist democracy, economic chaos a socialist economy, and revolution an anti-revolution, the notion of speech and obscenity becomes equally distorted and skewed. Under these circumstances, the author considers the shackles inherent in the vocabulary of oppression and contrasts this with the freedom of the body in sex. A kaleidoscopic digression on perversion and politics, A Little Hungarian Pornography is both satire and critique, trifle and tract, and further support for Esterhazy’s status as one of the best writers in Europe today.