Person
Photo by Ritter Doron
Mátyás Dunajcsik (1983, Budapest) is a poet, writer, literary translator and critic. He started publishing around the turn of the millennium, since then his prose, poetry, translations and criticism have appeared in all leading Hungarian literary reviews and magazines. In 2006 he recieved the Petőfi Poetry Grant from the Hungarian National Radio. He is member of the Attila József Young Writers’ Association (József Attila Kör, JAK), the Hungarian PEN Club, and the hungarian Translators’ Association (Műfordítók Egyesülete).
His first book was published in 2007, in the series of young authors of JAK, by L’Harmattan, with the illustrations of his partner Zsolt Korai. The Flyers’ Handbook (Repülési kézikönyv) is a diverse collection of short stories and poems, gathered around the theme of travelling on land, water, or in air. During their voyage, the stories’ heroes are always as fascinated by the erotics of art and culture as by the culture and art of erotics, may it be an ambigous visit to Venice, the discovery of an Art Nouveau apartment house, a Transylvanian excursion, the secrets of a baroque reading room, or a spy-movie-like quest for an unobtainable second-hand book in contemporary Budapest. With this book, Dunajcsik has represented Hungary in the 8th European First Novel Festival in the cadre of the 15th International Book Fair of Budapest in 2008. Later on that year, Flyers’ Handbook has been awarded the Bródy Sándor Prize for best debut in prose as „an outstanding talent of the young literary generation, who writes in diverse genres, and in his book, has at last shown his abilities in the field of prose. In his works, he treats human relations with great sensitivity, and is able to show a wide variety of different worlds to the reader.” (László Márton) In 2009 he also recieved the March Revolutionaries Youth Award for his achievement as a writer and translator.
In 2010, on the recommendation of Péter Esterházy, he was granted the Junge Akademie Stipendium of the Akademie der Künste, Berlin, which enabled him a 3-month stay in the German capital. Among other things, this resulted in the publication of his second book, The Ground Under Berlin, which is a joint project with the Mexican artist and Junge Akademie fellow Plinio Ávila.
He translates classical and contemporary Anglo-Saxon, French and Belgian authors, such as the works of Charles Baudelaire, Nick Cave, Arthur Rimbaud, Virginia Woolf, Marguerite Duras, Maurice Blanchot, William Cliff, Carl Norac, Laurent de Graeve, etc. His translation of Alain Robbe-Grillet’s last novel, Un roman sentimental (A Sentimental Novel) was published in spring 2009 by Magvető, his next one, The Original of Laura by Vladimir Nabokov was published in April, 2011 by Európa.
From 2005, he’s writing about contemporary Hungarian literature as a critic, and publishes essays on the works of Marcel Proust and Thomas Mann. He graduated at the Eötvös Loránd University of Budapest in 2011 with a degree in French language and literature and Aesthetics (philosophy of art).
As from August 2010 until 2011 June, he worked as foreign rights correspondent for one of the most prestigious literary publishing houses in Hungary, Magvető Publishing House, attending to several international book fairs, such as Frankfurt (2010), Paris (2011) and Torino (2011).
Mátyás Dunajcsik has participated in several international literary and artistic projects, such as the International Theatre Festival of Ancient Greek Drama (Paphos-Droushia, Cyprus, in 2000, 2001, 2004), Odysee du Danube (Vienna, Bratislava, Budapest, Belgrade, Turnu Severin, Cetate, Svishtov, Bucarest, in 2007), Europa ABC (Trsić, Serbia, in 2008), Re:Verse (Szigliget, Hungary, 2008), the Young Academy (Junge Akademie) programme of the Berlin Academy of Arts (Akademie der Künste, 2009), and the European Writers’ Parliament (Istanbul, 2010).
