Overview

My Secret Life is the first book in English translation of the poetry ofKrisztina Tth, onwere selected by her from three of her nine published collections, with the addition of some new or previously uncollected poems. Tth 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. Shortlisted for the Warwick Prize for Women in Translation 2025

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9781780377032

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Reviews

"'Her work has the nervous energy of the times but is shaped by a deep and disciplined intelligence. Her subjects are invariably human. They are concerned with love, family, friendship, loss, and a kind of existential disaffection. Tragic in one sense but ever inventive, full of life's minute yet highly resonant particulars, they seem to extend into an almost cinematic narrative about the cruelties of factory farming, murder, ageing, the treatment of women as sex toys and death itself. She is a bravura formalist when she needs to be. Her vigour and scope are enormous.' -- George Szirtes 'T�th muses that generations of humans, like bobbing needles, are ""seaming together the fraying layers of the past and the present"". Their countries of origin don't matter; neither do their religions, genders, or ethnicities. What T�th creates in Pixel is emblematic of Europe as she sees it: a place in which ""everything is sewn together while the thread itself is invisible"".' -- Stephanie Newman, review of Pixel, titled ''The Hungarian Author who foresaw the future of Nationalism''"

'Her work has the nervous energy of the times but is shaped by a deep and disciplined intelligence. Her subjects are invariably human. They are concerned with love, family, friendship, loss, and a kind of existential disaffection. Tragic in one sense but ever inventive, full of life's minute yet highly resonant particulars, they seem to extend into an almost cinematic narrative about the cruelties of factory farming, murder, ageing, the treatment of women as sex toys and death itself. She is a bravura formalist when she needs to be. Her vigour and scope are enormous.' -- George Szirtes 'T�th muses that generations of humans, like bobbing needles, are ""seaming together the fraying layers of the past and the present"". Their countries of origin don't matter; neither do their religions, genders, or ethnicities. What T�th creates in Pixel is emblematic of Europe as she sees it: a place in which ""everything is sewn together while the thread itself is invisible"".' -- Stephanie Newman, review of Pixel, titled ''The Hungarian Author who foresaw the future of Nationalism''

'Her work has the nervous energy of the times but is shaped by a deep and disciplined intelligence. Her subjects are invariably human. They are concerned with love, family, friendship, loss, and a kind of existential disaffection. Tragic in one sense but ever inventive, full of life's minute yet highly resonant particulars, they seem to extend into an almost cinematic narrative about the cruelties of factory farming, murder, ageing, the treatment of women as sex toys and death itself. She is a bravura formalist when she needs to be. Her vigour and scope are enormous.' -- George Szirtes 'Poems pulsating with sensual power, deeply painful poems, about everything that is regarded as very personal.[...] Not with her themes, not with her tone does she prove to be an innovator. In this respect she remains faithful to the great, intellectual current of Hungarian poetry, a current that is not very old. It can be traced back to the beginning of the twentieth century [...] Krisztina Tóth proves herself to be an innovator within this important tradition through the stirring rhythm of her poems. She wraps her persona, ready for any change of form, in rhythm. In other words, she makes herself impersonal in the most personal of ways and ready for confessions that are relevant for everyone; through her changing tone, through her surprises. [...] Krisztina Tóth's composition sets her apart from all the others. She has the strength of a buffalo and the weightlessness of a butterfly.' - Péter Nádas, afterword to Barcode 'Tóth muses that generations of humans, like bobbing needles, are ""seaming together the fraying layers of the past and the present"". Their countries of origin don't matter; neither do their religions, genders, or ethnicities. What Tóth creates in Pixel is emblematic of Europe as she sees it: a place in which ""everything is sewn together while the thread itself is invisible"".' -- Stephanie Newman, review of Pixel, titled ''The Hungarian Author who foresaw the future of Nationalism''

Author Information

Born in 1967, Krisztina Tthare for adults. Her plays includeThe Bat,published in English translation in the compilationPlays 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) andBarcode(Jantar Publishing, 2023). Her work was featured in the anthologyNew 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, was published by Bloodaxe in February 2025 and is on the shortlist for the Warwick Prize for Women in Translation 2025.

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