Set mostly in contemporary Cairo and Iraq, as well as Israel, London, and Hungary, these twelve short stories are a staggering follow-up to those in the acclaimed collection The Devil Is a Black Dog by leading Hungarian writer/photojournalist S ndor J szber nyi. Told from the perspective of Cairo-based European war correspondent Daniel Marosh, The Most Beautiful Night of the Soul is, above all, about a journalist examining some of today's most pressing Middle East conflicts and the lives of others even while forced to question his own assumptions and haunted by his own demons.
A unique, insider's view of the days, and disquieting nights, of one Middle East war correspondent who seeks the truth even while battling his own demons.
Resonates with the work of Tim O'Brien, Kevin Powers, Ernest Hemingway, and Graham Greene--when journalism and an insider's view becomes literature in capital letters The author's own personal story his unresolved relationships with his own father and with the mother of his child provides a compelling emotional backdrop. Spare, gritty, Hemingwayesque prose.
Author Biography
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
S ndor J szber nyi (Shahn-dor Yahs-ber-ay- ee) is the author of the critically acclaimed short story collection The Devil Is a Black Dog: Stories from the Middle East and Beyond (first English edition, New Europe Books, 2014; UK/Commonwealth edition: Scribe, 2015; India edition: Speaking Tiger Books, 2015; translator: Matt Henderson Ellis). The Most Beautiful Night of the Soul won Hungary's prestigious Libri Literary Prize. As a correspondent for Hungarian news sites, J szber nyi has covered the conflict with Islamic State, unrest in Ukraine, the revolutions in Egypt and Libya, the Gaza War, and the Darfur crisis. His stories and poems have been published in English in AGNI, Guernica, Tablet, the Brooklyn Rail, BodyLiterature.com, and Pilvax, and his writings have appeared in the Wall Street Journal and New York Times Magazine. J szber nyi, who divides his time between Budapest and Cairo, is currently writing a novel.
ABOUT THE TRANSLATOR
Paul Olchv ry, a native of Amherst, New York, spent much of his adult life in Hungary and has translated numerous Hungarian novels into English for such publishers as Simon & Schuster, New Directions, Hougton Mifflin, Northwestern, and Steerforth. He has received translation grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and Hungary's Mil n F st Foundation. He lives in Williamstown, Massachusetts.