Voyage to Kazohinia

by Sandor Szathmari, Inez Kemenes (Translator)

Overview

This classic dystopian satire has been compared to the likes of Brave New World, Gulliver's Travels and The Wizard of Oz. Voyage to Kazohinia is a tour de force of twentieth-century literature—and it is here published in English for the first time outside of Hungary. Sándor Szathmári's novel chronicles the travels of a modern Gulliver on the eve of World War II. A shipwrecked English ship's surgeon finds himself on an unknown island whose inhabitants, the Hins, live a technologically advanced existence without emotions, desires, arts, money, or politics. Soon unhappy amid this bleak perfection, Gulliver asks to be admitted to the closed settlement of the Behins, beings with souls and atavistic human traits. He has seen nothing yet. A massively entertaining mix of satire and science fiction, Voyage to Kazohinia has seen half a dozen editions in Hungary in decades since its original publication and remains the country's most popular cult classic.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780982578124
Publisher:	New Europe Books
Publication date:	07/03/2012
Pages:	368
Product dimensions:	5.58(w) x 8.32(h) x 0.80(d)
Age Range:	16 Years

About the Author

Sándor Szathmári (1897-1974) was among the most extraordinary and elusive figures in twentieth-century Hungarian literature. The author of two published novels and several story collections in his native tongue, he is best known for Voyage to Kazohina—which, titled Kazohinia on most editions in Hungary, has been treasured by generations of readers.
Szathmári spent much of his career as a mechanical engineer; this, together with his limited oeuvre, the biting satire of his magnum opus, and his political persuasions—which ranged from an early, ambivalent affiliation with communism to anticommunism as Hungary became a communist dictatorship—kept him ever on the margins of the officially sanctioned literary establishment.
A central figure in Hungary's Esperanto movement for decades, Szathmári published his writings—including, most famously, Voyage to Kazohinia—in his own Esperanto-language editions, ensuring him a measure of international recognition and literary freedom during the communist era.

Editorial Reviews

Despite its wit and intelligence, the late Szathmári’s dystopian cult classic (originally published in Hungary in 1941) flounders in a sea of details. Gulliver (yes, that Gulliver) is alive in 1935 and employed as a surgeon on the British ship Trafalgar. After a shipwreck, Gulliver washes up on the island of Kazohinia, which is populated by bizarre inhabitants who speak a strange language that seems to have been “compiled artificially.” The populace is divided into the enlightened Hins, who wear unnerving smiles as if they were “a regular geometric feature” of the face and do not understand emotions; the “ignorant” Belohins; and the “recalcitrant” Behins. Guided along by a Hin named Zataman, Gulliver explores the island and its people, whose sense of morality and society force Gulliver to reconsider his own understanding of life, love, and death. There’s no shortage of ponderous material, but by failing to create memorable characters (or, in the case of Gulliver, recreate), the author has not produced—as Swift before him did—a timeless classic, but an intermittently interesting artifact. (July)

Publishers Weekly

"A page-turner for both the adult as well as the adolescent reader, Voyage to Kazohinia is a classic waiting to be discovered by every literate person. This newly translated and profoundly transformative novel ought to be taught in high schools and colleges across the English-speaking world. "
—David Mandler, PhD, English Teacher at Stuyvesant High School, New York City

"Massively entertaining! . . . Make room for the new Gulliver. He has brought home news out of Kazohinia."
— Gregory Maguire, author of Wicked and Out of Oz

“Written in 1935, Voyage to Kazohinia is a strikingly postmodern and open-ended dystopia that rightfully belongs among the twentieth-century classics of the genre. And it is unique in being less a strident political cautionary tale than it is a brilliantly mordant reflection on government, reason, and language.”
—Carter Hanson, Associate Professor of English, Valparaiso University

“[A] dystopian cult classic. . . . Gulliver washes up on the island of Kazohinia, which is populated by bizarre inhabitants . . . whose sense of morality and society force [him] to reconsider his own understanding of life, love, and death.”
—Publishers Weekly

“Highly entertaining. . . . Readers familiar with the classic Swift satire will find much to admire here, but those unfamiliar with Gulliver’s Travels should still have a good time.”
—Booklist

"A satire on our world of power politics... clever and inventive."
— Allan Massie, The Wall Street Journal

From the Publisher