The International Library

The International Library: Attila Bartis on The End

Thursday, 1:30 pm EDT October 26, 2023

The Center for Fiction
& Livestreamed

The International Library is thrilled to welcome Romanian-Hungarian writer Attila Bartis, one of the most accomplished and inventive members of the contemporary Eastern European literary vanguard, for a conversation on his bold, monumental novel The End.

This event is a hybrid event, with live viewings happening at The Center for Fiction in Brooklyn (1:30pm ET), The American Library in Paris (in Paris; 19h30 CEST), and The Center for the Art of Translation in San Francisco (10:30am PT). You can also livestream this event worldwide.

In-person tickets to The Center for Fiction include an optional lunch.

Lunch Option A: Ham sandwich with brie, arugula, and house-made spiced honey mustard.
Lunch Option B: Vegan chickpea salad sandwich.

Both options are served with an apple, a bag of salted potato chips, and a soft drink of choice.

About The International Library

This event is part of The International Library, a series launched in collaboration with the American Library in Paris and the Center for the Art of Translation which will offer conversations across time, place, and language. The International Library celebrates the live diffusion of in-person conversations in the hope of connecting new audiences across land and sea for a collective, intercultural experience. These conversations will broach deeper questions about writing and translation as we learn to think critically about how stories are told, investigating the points of view, the timing of the translations, and the intended or assumed audiences as well as inspiration, philosophy, and craft.

Featuring

Attila Bartis

Attila Bartis

Attila Bartis is a Transylvanian-Hungarian novelist and photographer. His innovative writing has won some of Hungary’s most prestigious literary awards, including the Tibor Déry Prize (1997), the Sándor Márai Prize (2002), and the József Attila Prize (2005). His novel Tranquility (Archipelago, 2008), translated by Imre Goldstein, was awarded the inaugural Best Translated Book Award, and in 2023, Archipelago published his novel The End, translated by Judith Sollosy.

Photo Credit: PIM

Featured Book

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The End

By Attila Bartis

Published by Archipelago / Steerforth Press

Translated by Judith Sollosy

PURCHASE

Nothing approximates death as closely as photography.

Unspooling like a roll of film, The End captures in frames of language the faces and places of András’ memory, which together form a fever-dream collage of an artist’s psyche.

In a small town in communist Hungary, András Szabad’s childhood comes to an abrupt end with his father’s return from prison and the death of his loving mother. In search of new beginnings, András moves with his father to Budapest, where he discovers a passion for photography, for uncovering the invisible through the visible, and for fixing matter and memory so as to ward them against the inevitability of time.

An unorthodox first encounter brings András together with Éva, and soon they become entangled in a psychosexual relationship of consuming passion, but also bitterness and resentment.

With vibrant precision and fluid dialogue, Attila Bartis blends a sprawling family saga with 20th-century European history and offers an unflinchingly lucid yet boundlessly compassionate account of psychological devastation under authoritarianism.

About this series

The International Library

Join the American Library in Paris, the Center for the Art of Translation, and The Center for Fiction for conversations across time, place, culture, and literary tradition, with live audiences in San Francisco, Brooklyn, and Paris.

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