Réka Mán-Várhegyi

Enikő, a sociologist, has just left her husband and is returning to Budapest from New York. She is thirty years old, has ambitions, and a position at the university. She wants to write a book entitled The Misery of Hungarians. Tamás Bogdán is a star lecturer at the university; the subject of his sociological research is Békásmegyer, a huge communist-style housing estate on the outskirts of Budapest, with Magnetic Hill in the centre as its symbol. The estate happened to be where his student Réka grew up. Tamás’s love affair with Enikő and later with Réka winds through the plot layers of this cleverly written novel while, simultaneously, the author has created an evocative portrait of contemporary Hungarian society.

Published by Větrné mlýny, 2023

Réka Mán-Várhegyi (* 1979) was born in Romania. She moved to Hungary after the fall of the communist regime in 1990 and, two years later, acquired Hungarian citizenship. She studied aesthetics and sociology and became an editor of children’s books. Her 2014 debut, Unhappiness at the Aurora Housing Estate (Boldogtalanság az Auróra-telepen), was well received, and she won the European Union Prize for Literature for her novel Magnetic Hill.