Gyozo Határ (who publishes in the West as Victor Határ) is acknowledged as one of the leading post-World War II writers in contemporary Hungarian literature. He is prolific as well as diverse, the author of poetry, fiction, plays, essays, and philosophical texts. He is also a highly regarded translator in several languages. Határ's extensive body of work is shaped by two extremes: he lives removed from the continuity of Hungarian literary life, but nonetheless his work is defined primarily in terms of his cultural heritage. His predicament is similar to that of other Eastern European writers such as Mircea Eliade, Witold Gombrowicz, E. M. Cioran, and Vladimir Nabokov, since Határ, like them, has spent a major part of his life in exile. Consequently, the condition of exile informs his worldview; but unlike other writers of his generation, for Hatá...