Overview

A Hungarian village on the Great Plain: a microcosm reflecting this country's history from early tribal invasion to Soviet subordination to European Community membership. Here, peasants, herders, party girls, former Nazis and lapsed communists share gossip as well as love stories; and unscrupulous leaders, totalitarian or freely elected, decide behaviour. Like a fly in amber, this is a moment captured of a time and a place under peaceful upheaval. The old ways are vanishing. But what is being lost and what is remaining only slowly comes clear. Celebrated photographer and author, Jill Culiner, spends years of her life there, chronicling these changes, learning the language and buying property. She is as committed as any. She weaves her own story with the story of that community and the history of living on the edge of the Great Hungarian Plain. It's a raw story, honestly told, of a people crisscrossed with violence and hatreds, loves and escapes. There remains one constant: hatred of the long-vanished rural Jew.

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9781910461723

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Reviews

Part history, part detective story, part personal memoir, Those Absent brings to life a cast of characters fitting for a Dickensian novel, deals with the fallibility of memory, the nature of prejudice and persecution, and the past as both history and fiction. Dr Michael Talalay, Writer, Lecturer, Regents University London A fascinating literary journey, and frank investigation of the region's daily life, its common beliefs and rarely mentioned truths. Highly recommended. Mel Cederbaum, Executive Director, Toronto Workmen's Circle Part memoir, part travelogue, part history, part elegy, this multi-layered homage to the Great Hungarian Plain embraces its majesty and tragedy at virtually the last possible moment. Robin Roger, Psychotherapist, Writer, Reviewer The long history of hatred toward the Jews combined with the exploitation and misery of the peasants have forged Hungarian identity. Jill Culiner's Central Europe is plagued by the same demons that led to the tragedies of the past century. Dr Marcel Calvez, Emeritus Professor of Sociology, University of Rennes, France In a narrative of village life, coarse xenophobia and cruelty contrast with acceptance, friendship and laughter. The horror of the past is concealed, yet Culiner finds compassion in human failure. Penny-Lynn Cookson, Art Historian, Writer

Author Information

A contemporary artist, writer and photographer, Culiner was born in New York, raised in Toronto, and was granted British nationality. For the last fifty years, she has been living and working in Turkey, Germany, France, England, Hungary, Greece, and the Netherlands. She has crossed much of Europe on foot, and talked about these adventures when a broadcaster onRadio France.Culiner's exhibitions about the World Wars and the Holocaust, La M�moire Effac�e, travelled throughout France, Hungary and Canada under the auspices of l'UNESCO, and the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Her (social-critical) artwork has been shown in Germany, France, England, Spain, Italy, and Poland.She presently lives in a former auberge in France that is so chaotic and strange, it has beenclassified as a museum: http: //www.jill-culiner.comHer non-fiction, Finding Home in the Footsteps of the Jewish Fusgeyers won the Joseph and Faye Tanenbaum Prize for Canadian Jewish History and was shortlisted for the ForeWord Magazine Award. Her biography of a nineteenth-century rebel Yiddish poet and singer, A Contrary Journey with Velvel Zbarzher, Bard, was published by Claret Press in 2022.

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