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Travel Literature
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Travellers writing diary accounts usually treat Hungary rather cursorily as they make tracks for ‘more exotic’ Romania or places beyond. A few classic – and very personal accounts – are still available in bookshops, libraries or on Amazon.com.
Between the Woods and the Water (Patrick Leigh Fermor) - In describing his 1933 walk through West and Central Europe en route to Constantinople as a young man, Fermor wrote the classic account of Hungary.
Stealing from a Deep Place (Brian Hall) - Sensitive but never cloying, the author describes his tempered love affair with the still communist Budapest of the 1980s while completing a two-year cycle tour of Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria.
The City of the Magyar or Hungary and Her Institutions in 1839–40 (Julia Pardoe) - One of the best sources for early 19th-century Hungary in English, this three-volume part-travelogue, part-history by a British spinster is priceless for its vivid descriptions of contemporary events such as the devastating Danube floods of 1838.
Under the Frog (Tibor Fischer) - An amusing account of the antics of two members of Hungary’s elite national basketball team from the end of WWII through the 1956 Uprising.
Homage to the Eighth District (Giorgio and Nicola Pressburger) - A poignant account of life in what was a Jewish working-class section of Budapest during and after WWII by twin brothers who emigrated to Italy in 1956.
In Time of Trouble (Claud Cockburn) - An enlightening, often very funny, autobiography by the celebrated British journalist who spent several years in Budapest as a young man in the 1920s with his government servant father. The account of the aborted orgy by the banks of the Danube is classic.
Hungary & the Hungarians: The Keywords (István Bart) - Subtitled ‘A Concise Dictionary of Facts, Beliefs, Customs, Usage & Myths’, this book will prepare you for (and guide you through) just about everything Magyar – from ABC (a kind of greengrocer under the old regime) to Zsolnay.
Living in Hungary (Jean-Luc Soule and Alain Fleischer) - This lavishly photographed coffee-table book takes you into the country’s finest and most elegant cafés, bathhouses, palaces, castles, hotels, restaurants and private homes.
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