When I was looking up books I might choose for Hungarian Lit Month, this 1970 novel sounded particularly appealing to me, with its oblique approach to reality. Metropole is the tale of Budai, a Hungarian linguist who was supposed to be at a conference in Helsinki, but has instead ended up in a strange city where the language is completely unintelligible to him. 

It is not just that Budai can’t speak or read the language. It’s that the language bears no clear resemblance to any language family that he knows, and the usual strategies he might use in order to decipher patterns in an unfamiliar tongue don’t work for him. Even the layout of his hotel bill doesn’t make sense. The city is vast, full of people and activity, but nothing helps Budai get a handle on the place. 

At first, this is all an inconvenience, and if only Budai could make himself understood, he could be on his way. But when his money starts to run out, the situation becomes ever more urgent. The only person with whom Budai is able to build any sort of tentative relationship is a female lift attendant whose name he can’t catch. He thinks he may have worked out the words for different numbers from her, but he can’t be sure even of that. A brief glimpse of someone reading an old Hungarian magazine raises the hope that Budai may not be alone, but also the fear that there may not be a way home. 

In George Szirtes’ translation, Karinthy’s language is as immersive as Budai’s experience of the city. It is coherent from moment to moment, but not necessarily as a totality. There is a sense of reality as being full to the brim and elusive at the same time – isolation written into the fabric of the city. A striking sequence sees Budai caught up in a popular uprising, all traces of which have vanished by the next day. Even something as specific and forceful as this becomes chillingly anonymous and disposable. 

Metropole is published by Saqi Books.