Metropole Format: Paperback

“A Central European classic to be discovered and relished.”—Eva Hoffman

“A stunning novel. Funny, nightmarish and jubilant.”—Libération

"Although it took almost 40 years for Metropole to be translated into English, the book holds up well. In the same way that Kafka becomes relevant again every time you renew your driver's license, Karinthy captures that enduring, horrifying and exhilarating state of being at the mercy of an unfamiliar land."—Jessa Crispin for NPR

“I don’t know when I’ve read a more perfect novel-a dynamically helpless hero (in the line of Kafka), and a gorgeous spiral of action, nothing spare, nothing wrong, inventive and without artifice.”—Michael Hoffman in TLS Books of the Year 2009

Budai finds himself in a strange city where he can’t understand a word anyone says. One claustrophobic day blurs into another as he desperately struggles to survive in this vastly overpopulated metropolis where there are as many languages as there are people.

Metropole is a suspenseful and haunting Hungarian classic, and a vision of hell unlike any previously imagined.

Ferenc Karinthy was born in Budapest in 1921. He was a translator and editor, as well as an award-winning novelist, playwright, and journalist.

Ferenc Karinthy was born in Budapest in 1921. He obtained a PhD in linguistics, and went on to be a translator and editor, as well as an award-winning novelist, playwright, journalist and water polo champion. He wrote over a dozen novels. This is the first novel to be translated into English. George Szirtes - award-winning poet, translator and editor - was born in Budapest and came to England as a refugee in 1956. His recent poetry collection, Reel, won the T. S. Eliot Prize in 2005. He has translated over ten works of Hungarian poetry, fiction and drama into English.