My Secret Life is the first book in English translation by one of the leading Hungarian poets of the generation who began publishing in the late 1980s. The recipient of many awards, Krisztina Tóth is also renowned for her fiction which has been translated into many languages including English. The poems in My Secret Life were selected by her from three of her nine published collections, with the addition of some new or previously uncollected poems.
Tóth is, and has been for several years, a major figure in Hungarian writing and, being a major figure with an important public voice, she has also been, and is now, subject to unrelenting attacks by the government-funded, government-supporting, gutter press. She has been self-exiled in England but is moving to Switzerland shortly. Originally attacked for suggesting that a couple of standard pieces of literature might be removed from the school syllabus and replaced by writing by living women authors, her life has become the subject of the sort of storm of defamation already practised on others perceived to be threatening the values of the government.
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Born in 1967,
Krisztina Tóth is one of the most popular and best known Central European authors, and the recipient of numerous awards. She studied sculpting and literature in Budapest, spending two years in Paris during her university years. She has published nine books of poetry and ten books of prose to date as well as 24 books for children. In 2015, her novel
Aquarium featured on the shortlist of the German Internationaler Literaturpreis. Her works have been translated into 25 languages; her novels, short stories and poems can be read in German, French, English, Polish, Finnish, Swedish, Czech and Spanish, among others. Her bestselling short novel
The Monkey’s Eyes was published in Hungary in 2023; an English translation is forthcoming from Seven Stories Press in the US. Her children’s books treat topics considered unusual, even taboo, in children’s literature.
Mum Had an Operation explains cancer to schoolchildren in a humorous and lyrical tone, while the main characters in
A Story for Nose-Blowers are two members of the ‘Snot family’ who live in the right and the left cavity of a nose.
The Girl Who Wouldn’t Talk was inspired by the story of her own adopted daughter. Her musical
Wanderer of the Years explains passing and letting go to children, whereas
Pokémon Go and
The Rubber Bat are for adults. Her plays include
The Bat, published in English translation in the compilation
Plays from Contemporary Hungary: ‘Difficult Women’ and Resistant Dramatic Voices (Bloomsbury, 2023). Two collections of her short stories have also been published in English translation,
Pixel (Seagull Books, 2019) and
Barcode (Jantar Publishing, 2023). Her work was featured in the anthology
New Order: Hungarian Poets of the Post 1989 Generation (Arc Publications, 2010). The first book of her poetry in English translation,
My Secret Life: Selected Poems, translated by George Szirtes, is published by Bloodaxe in 2025.
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