The Nobel Prize committee awarded Kertész the prize in literature in 2002 "for writing that upholds the fragile experience of the individual against the barbaric arbitrariness of history."
Kertész calls The K. Dossier "an autobiography for two voices". It is based on a series of interviews with Kertész made in 2003-2004 by Zoltán Hafner, his friend and editor. In the book, Kertész describes his parents, examines his career, recalls love affairs, tells how he achieved intellectual freedom, and reveals how his own life is connected to the characters in his books.
Among the book's details, the reader finds who Kertész's favourite childhood hero was: Captain Hornblower, the main character of an English novel published in 1943, who fights against Napoleon - a thinly veiled stand-in for Hitler. The reader also learns Kertész played bridge regularly with Géza Ottlik, another famous Hungarian author, although they never spoke about writing.
"I have never befriended the writers whom I really liked," Kertész has said.
Kertész is best known for his Holocaust memoir Fatelessness. He has said he was not compelled as a writer to produce the book. Rather, writing the book brought a moment of liberation for him, signalling the possibility of release from his inner exile.
"All in all, I am pro-cheerfulness. It is my fault if I do not strike other people as such," Kertész writes in The K. Dossier.
The K. Dossier was published in Hungarian by Magvető and in German by Rowohlt.
Reviewing the book in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Andreas Kilb wrote, "This Elegy of a fateless life is also a hymn to literature, in which fate is elevated."
Tickets for the reading can be purchased at the National Theatre Ticket Office at Andrássy út 28 (tel. 373-0963, 373-0964, 373-0995, 373-0996; email: szervezes@nemzetiszinhaz.hu) or at the National Theatre Ticket Counter at Bajor Gizi park 1 in Budapest's District IX.
