For the Literarium's season-opening evening, the audience will be able to meet “in the flesh” an important and great writer who is considered a true man of the theatre: the author of such novels as “the X's” (Az Ikszek) and Captivity (Fogság), which have proved themselves major and canonical works of contemporary Hungarian literature. His oeuvre, however, is so much broader than that, so it would not be right for the evening directed by József Balog, who is making his debut in the series, to place only Spiró the novelist in the spotlight: he is also an editor, a university lecturer, a tenured professor, an academic fellow of the Eastern European group of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, a theatre director, dramaturge, as well as the author of unforgettable dramas (Csirkefej, A békecsászár, Koccanás) and novellas – these are all Spiró, too. It is no coincidence that his popularity – for example, his readership as can be measured in numbers that exceed the great majority of his colleagues: whatever he grabs hold of, the work being created mobilises and sheds light on historical memory in such a way that it also proves relevant from the point of view of the challenges of the present. Full of sure-footed erudition and based on reliable sources, with lively timeliness and a writing standard of the highest level: these are perhaps the greatest attractions of his oeuvre. And in order that the stage appearance of this author, a noted man of the stage himself, be a more total experience, such featured participants as the brilliant contra-bassist József Barcza Horváth, the excellent Réka Szabó and József Gyabronka, and, last but not least, György Spiró's own invited guest, the brain surgeon Dr. János Vajda will also be making appearances.

Presented by: Palace of Arts