All three participants lived in Budapest during the years of political transition and they shared their personal experiences with the audience. Phillips was a new Harvard graduate when he moved to Budapest because "the world was there at the end of the eighties." He said he used experiences gained over two years in the Hungarian capital when he wrote the novel Prague. The novel became a bestseller in Britain in 2002 and launched Phillips's career.
Fischer's first novel Under the Frog was also set in Hungary. As well as making the shortlist for the Booker Prize, the novel fetched the Betty Trask award, a highly respected literary prize in Britain. Fischer's parents were Hungarian emigrants who moved to Britain in 1956, after the ill-fated revolution against Soviet rule. The novel tells about their lives in Hungary in the years before the revolution. He worked as foreign correspondent for the Daily Telegraph from 1988 to 1990 and summarised his experiences in a Channel 4 documentary entitled Hungarians not Comrades. Excerpts from the film were shown at the discussion.
Szirtes, a poet and translator, moved to Britain as a child and has since become a well known contemporary poet. He introduced to British audiences the works of many renowned Hungarians, including Sándor Márai, Ágnes Nemes-Nagy, Gyula Krúdy and Imre Madách. At the event, he recited some of his poems written during the political changes in Hungary, when he was a correspondent for the BBC.
Source: Hungarian News Agency (MTI)
