Szentkuthy, Miklos

Miklos Szentkuthy, original name Miklos Pfisterer, (born June 2, 1908, Budapest, Austria-Hungary [now in Hungary]—died July 18, 1988, Budapest), Hungarian writer who wrote complex experimental fiction that explored the absurdity of life and the impossibility of imposing order on a chaotic world.

After attending Budapest University, Szentkuthy taught secondary school in Budapest (1932–57). After publishing several avant-garde novels, including the structureless Prae (1934), he began work on Szent Orpheus breviáriuma (“The Breviary of St. Orpheus”), a massive philosophical examination of human experience. His work was suppressed during a period of government censorship after World War II. Thereafter he wrote fictional biographies of such figures as Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and translated into Hungarian classics of English literature, most notably James Joyce’s Ulysses. After Szentkuthy was officially rehabilitated in the 1970s, he resumed work on the multivolume Szent Orpheus breviáriuma, which he completed in 1984.