The Pathseeker

IMRE KERTSZ was born in Budapest in 1929. At age 15 he was deported to Auschwitz, then Buchenwald, and finally to a subcamp at Zeitz, to labor in a factory where Nazi scientists were trying to convert coal into motor fuel. Upon liberation in 1945 he worked as a journalist before being fired for not adhering to the Communist party doctrine. After a brief service in the Hungarian Army, he devoted himself to writing, although as a dissident he was forced to live under Spartan circumstances. Nonetheless he stayed in Hungary after the failed 1956 uprising, continuing to write plays and fiction in nearanonymity and supporting himself by translating from the German writers such as Joseph Roth, Freud, Nietzsche, and Wittgenstein. He remained littleknown until 1975, when he published his first book,Fatelesseness, a novel about a teenage boy sent to a concentration camp. It became the first book of a trilogy that eventually includedThe FailureandKaddish for an Unborn Child.Subsequent titles includeLiquidation,Union Jack, and, most recently, a memoir,The File on K. In 2002, Kertesz was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. He lives in Budapest and Berlin. Tim Wilkinson is the primary English translator of Imre Kertesz as well as numerous other significant works of Hungarian history and literature. In 2005, his translation of Kertesz'sFatelessnesswas awarded the PEN Club/Book of the Month Club Translation Prize. He lives in London.Wilkinson, Tim is the author of 'The Pathseeker', published 2008 under ISBN 9781933633534 and ISBN 1933633530.