Chicago of the Balkans
Budapest in Hungarian Literature 1900-1939

Gwen Jones

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Legenda (General Series)

Legenda

4 March 2013  •  168pp

ISBN: 978-1-907975-57-8 (hardback)  •  RRP £80, $110, €95

ISBN: 978-1-315095-79-0 (Taylor & Francis ebook)

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At the point of its creation in 1873, Budapest was intended to be a pleasant rallying point of orderliness, high culture and elevated social principles: the jewel in the national crown. From the turn of the century to World War II, however, the Hungarian capital was described, variously, as: Judapest, the sinful city, not in Hungary, and the Chicago of the Balkans. This is the first English-language study of competing metropolitan narratives in Hungarian literature that spans both the liberal late Habsburg and post-liberal, ‘Christian-national’ eras, at the same time as the ‘Jewish Question’ became increasingly inseparable from representations of the city. Works by writers from a wide variety of backgrounds are discussed, from Jewish satirists to icons of the radical Right, representatives of conservative national schools, and modernist, avant-garde and ‘peasantist’ authors.

Gwen Jones is Hon. Research Associate at the Department of Hebrew and Jewish Studies, University College London.

Reviews:

  • ‘Based on a historical contextualization of the social background of writers and the ideological debates of the time, a good knowledge of the secondary literature, a detailed discussion of the content and plots of relevant literary works and ample quotations in Hungarian (consistently translated in English) from a representative sample of novels and short stories, Jones’s book is a social history of Budapest literature.’ — Alexander Vari, Slavonic and East European Review 93.2, April 2015, 352-55 (full text online)

Bibliography entry:

Jones, Gwen, Chicago of the Balkans: Budapest in Hungarian Literature 1900-1939 (Legenda, 2013)

First footnote reference: 35 Gwen Jones, Chicago of the Balkans: Budapest in Hungarian Literature 1900-1939 (Legenda, 2013), p. 21.

Subsequent footnote reference: 37 Jones, p. 47.

(To see how these citations were worked out, follow this link.)

Bibliography entry:

Jones, Gwen. 2013. Chicago of the Balkans: Budapest in Hungarian Literature 1900-1939 (Legenda)

Example citation: ‘A quotation occurring on page 21 of this work’ (Jones 2013: 21).

Example footnote reference: 35 Jones 2013: 21.

(To see how these citations were worked out, follow this link.)

This Legenda title was first published by Modern Humanities Research Association and Maney Publishing but rights to it are now held by Modern Humanities Research Association and Routledge.

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Permanent link to this title:

www.mhra.org.uk/publications/Chicago-Balkans