TÓTH KRISZTINA: Barcode
February 19, 2024, Author: lizzysiddal8 Comments
Translated from Hungarian by Peter Sherwood
Shortlisted for the 2023 Warwick Prize for Women in Translation
15 short stories which may or may not be interconnected by a protagonist growing up in the communist Hungary. Read this as you will. I didn’t catch onto the potential interconnectedness until late on, but I don’t think it matters. This is a debut book of short stories, written by someone who was already celebrated as a poet when they were originally published in 2006, and they are finely observed, relevant still even though from a world gone by.