''Satantango'' (, tr. "Satan's Tango") is a 1985 novel by the Hungarian writer

László Krasznahorkai László Krasznahorkai (; born 5 January 1954) is a Hungarian novelist and screenwriter known for difficult and demanding novels, often labeled postmodern, with dystopian and melancholic themes. Several of his works, including his novels '' Sat ...

. It is Krasznahorkai's

debut novel A debut novel is the first novel a novelist publishes. Debut novels are often the author's first opportunity to make an impact on the publishing industry, and thus the success or failure of a debut novel can affect the ability of the author to pu ...

. It was adapted into a widely acclaimed seven-hour film, ''

Sátántangó ''Sátántangó'' (), also known in English as ''Satan's Tango'', is a 1994 internationally-coproduced epic drama film directed by Hungarian filmmaker Béla Tarr. Shot in black-and-white and running for more than seven hours, it is based on t ...

'' (1994), directed by

Béla Tarr Béla Tarr (born 21 July 1955) is a Hungarian filmmaker. Debuting with the film '' Family Nest'' (1979), Tarr began his directorial career with a brief period of what he refers to as "social cinema", aimed at telling everyday stories about ordi ...

. The English translation by

George Szirtes George Szirtes (; born 29 November 1948) is a British poet and translator from the Hungarian language into English. Originally from Hungary, he has lived in the United Kingdom for most of his life after coming to the country as a refugee at the ...

won the

Best Translated Book Award The Best Translated Book Award was an American literary award that recognized the previous year's best original translation into English, one book of poetry and one of fiction. It was inaugurated in 2008 and was conferred by Three Percent, the onl ...

(2013).

Structure

The novel is postmodernist and is narrated from multiple perspectives. The structure of the book's chapters resembles a

tango Tango is a partner dance and social dance that originated in the 1880s along the Río de la Plata, the natural border between Argentina and Uruguay. The tango was born in the impoverished port areas of these countries from a combination of Arge ...

, with six "steps" forward followed by six backward. Every chapter is a long paragraph which does not contain line breaks. The twelve parts are titled as follows ''(in the original Hungarian and in English translation)''. * I. A hír, hogy jönnek ews of Their Coming* II. Feltámadunk e Are Resurrected* III. Valamit tudni o Know Something* IV. A pók dolga I. he Work of the Spider I* V. Felfeslők nraveling* VI. A pók dolga II (Ördögcsecs, sátántangó) he Work of the Spider II (The Devil's Tit, Satantango)* VI. Irimiás beszédet mond rimiás Makes A Speech* V. A távlat, ha szemből he Distance, As Seen* IV. Mennybe menni? Lázálmodni? eavenly Vision? Hallucination?* III. A távlat, ha hátulról he Distance, as Approached from the Other Side* II. Csak a gond, a munka othing but Work and Worries* I. A kör bezárul he Circle Closes

Plot

Most of the action occurs in a run-down Hungarian village ("estate") which is in a vicinity of an unnamed town but the inhabitants are almost isolated from the outside world. The main character, Irimiás, a con man posing as a savior, arrives at the estate, achieves an almost unlimited power over the inhabitants, gets them to give him all their hard-earned money, convinces them to move to another abandoned "estate" nearby, and then brings them to the town, where he disperses them around the country.

Reception

Jacob Silverman of ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...

'' reviewed the book in 2012, and wrote that it "shares many of rasznahorkais later novels' thematic concerns—the abeyance of time, an apocalyptic sense of crisis and decay—but it's an altogether more digestible work. Its story skips around in perspective and temporality, but the narrative is rarely unclear. For a writer whose characters often exhibit a claustrophobic interiority, Krasznahorkai also shows himself to be unexpectedly expansive and funny here." Theo Tait in ''

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in Manchester in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'' and changed its name in 1959, followed by a move to London. Along with its sister paper, ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardi ...

'' praised the novel and, in particular, said that it is "possessed of a distinctive, compelling vision". He underscored the perceptible influence of

Franz Kafka Franz Kafka (3 July 1883 – 3 June 1924) was a novelist and writer from Prague who was Jewish, Austrian, and Czech and wrote in German. He is widely regarded as a major figure of 20th-century literature. His work fuses elements of Litera ...

and

Samuel Beckett Samuel Barclay Beckett (; 13 April 1906 – 22 December 1989) was an Irish writer of novels, plays, short stories, and poems. Writing in both English and French, his literary and theatrical work features bleak, impersonal, and Tragicomedy, tra ...

on the novel.

External links

Review from The Guardian

Review from The LA Review of Books

References

{{László Krasznahorkai 1985 novels 20th-century Hungarian novels Works by László Krasznahorkai Postmodern novels Magvető books

Structure

Plot

Reception

External links

See also

References