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Tibor Dery (1894--1977) was born in Budapest. He was imprisoned in 1943 for translating Andre Gide's diary, and after being dispelled from the Communist Party in 1953, began writing satires of the Hungarian regime. A spokesman during the Hungarian Revolt of 1956, Dery was arrested and sentenced to nine years of prison for his writings and political activities. Due to an international outcry, he was released in 1960. George Szirtes was born in Budapest in 1948 and moved to England as a refugee in 1956. He has published several books and won various prizes including the T S Eliot Prize for Reel in 2005. He lives near Norwich with his wife, the painter Clarissa Upchurch. Edward Hyams won the Scott Moncrieff Translation Prize for Joan of Arc: By Herself and Her Witnesses by Regine Pernoud.
One of Hungary's leading novelistsEMr. Dery brings a kind of cunning naivete that records (or imagines) with utmost seriousness all the tremors of Niki's soul. He puts, as it were, the psychological realism of the contemporary novel at the disposal of a fox terrier. - The New York Times <br> Outstanding Hungarian novelist and imprisoned hero of the 1956 revolution. - The Nation <br> Tibor Dery satirized authority in 1956 with a compassionate story of Niki the dog (and underdog) who triumpts-and is then imprisoned. - The Washington Post <br> The greatest depicter of human beings of our time. -Georg Luk+cs <br> Tibor Dery was a dissenter, a subversive revolutionary and, in his old age, a jailbird. He was also one of the greatest stylists in the history of Hungarian literature. -Peter Nadas <br> Niki is a masterpiece, like Of Mice and Men, of the presentation of 'Man's inhumanity to man. -Richard Church <br> One of the most prominent writers in Hungary. - The New York Times <br> In Niki there is nothing mawkish: one's heart is truly touched. By centering his seemingly artless story on the figure of a dog-that humblest, most poignant, and tenacious symbol of devotion, of the need to be attached-Tibor Dery has done more than present a contemporary political and human tragedy; he has illumined what might be called canine situation under the aspect of eternity. -Rosamond Lehmann <br> The biggest international success of Dery's own writing career was his novella, Niki: The Story of a Dog, which appeared in Hungary in 1956 and was soon translated into various languages. It is an apparently simple storyline embodying a sharp critique of hard line Stalinist dictatorship. Here, too, the values are clear, as are their anthiseses: trust versus suspicion, freewill versus coercion, logic versus paranoia, generosity versus pettiness, love versus fear. In the West, no doubt, Niki 's success was helped by the fact that its author was in prison, and was therefore available as Cold War material. -George Szirtes, Love and Other Stories <br> [Dery's stories] remind me of stories by Toslstoy, Chekhov, Verga, Lawrence and Hemingway. Here is one of the outstanding wrters of the twentieth century. -Ben Sonnenberg <br> Tibor Dery has few equals among writers in Hungarian...[He] is one of the ...masters of that great tradition of European realism that we associated with the name of Thomas Mann, and he deserves our close attention. - Times Literary Supplement (London) <br> The strains of making fiction under...pressure show everywhere in Niki : it's a tiny story, but told, for all it's simplicity, with a strange effect of density, as if it is compressed under a great weight. - The Cambridge Quarterly <br>.,. a tender allegory of the years of postwar repression in Hungary. - The Observer (London)
