“From now on, Kolozsvár is always the way the train takes us home…” •

Abstract

One characteristic of fiction is its ability to shape collective knowledge of the past, to create images of the past that can persist for generations – and as a consequence, for generations without direct experience, these images embody the past. In my study, I seek to answer the question how the memory of the transitions of power that ended the First World War is represented in contemporary Hungarian novels (published after 2000), and what other concepts are linked to the notion of the Treaty of Trianon. In the novels of Barbara Bauer, Zsuzsa Selyem, Magda Szabó, Andrea Tompa, János Térey and Gábor Vida, the theme is conveyed with different approaches, a varying significance, in a prose language that is distinctly different in each case, but at the same time is integral to the individual oeuvre of each author.