István Örkény was a Hungarian writer. A typical feature of his plays and novels is satiric view and creation of grotesque situations.

Life

He was born into the family of a pharmacists. After high school he studied first chemistry and later pharmacy. He graduated in pharmacy in 1934 and then traveled to Western Europe. After returning from his journey he earned another degree in chemistry. He published his first book, Ocean Dance, in 1941. In 1942 he was sent to the Russian Front

Eastern Front (World War II)

The Eastern Front of World War II was a theatre of World War II between the European Axis powers and co-belligerent Finland against the Soviet Union, Poland, and some other Allies which encompassed Northern, Southern and Eastern Europe from 22 June 1941 to 9 May 1945...

. As a Jew, he was placed in a forced-labor unit. There he was captured and detained in a labour camp near Moscow

Moscow

Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...

, where he wrote the play Voronesh. In 1946 he came back home to Budapest. From 1956 after the revolution in Hungary

Hungary

Hungary , officially the Republic of Hungary , is a landlocked country in Central Europe. It is situated in the Carpathian Basin and is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine and Romania to the east, Serbia and Croatia to the south, Slovenia to the southwest and Austria to the west. The...

 until 1960 he was not allowed to publish because of political reasons. Later he became exceedingly popular because of his absurd and grotesque short stories (for instance in the book One Minute Stories). In the year 2004 a theatre in Budapest was named after him (Örkeny Theater, the former Madách

Imre Madách

Imre Madách de Sztregova et de Kelecsény was a Hungarian writer, poet, lawyer and politician. His major work is The Tragedy of Man . It is a dramatic poem approximately 4000 lines long, which elaborates on ideas comparable to Goethe's Faust...

 Chamber Theatre).

Works

• Ocean Dance
• Voronezh
• Macskajáték (Catsplay): His most famous theatre play. It was originally written for TV. It is about two aging sisters. It was translated into many languages.
• Tóték (The Toth Family): a drama
• One Minute Stories (cf. flash fiction
  Flash fiction
  Flash fiction is a style of fictional literature or fiction of extreme brevity. There is no widely accepted definition of the length of the category...
  
  )

External links

• http://www.rev.hu/history_of_56/szerviz/kislex/biograf/orkeny.htm
• http://www.suhrkamp.de/autoren/autor.cfm?id=3598
• http://www.lyrikwelt.de/rezensionen/minutennovellen-r.htm
• Brockhaus Enzyklopädie 1991 Neunzehnte Auflage, Band 16, S. 274
• István Örkény homepage in English