A linguist flying to a conference in Helsinki has landed in a strange city where he can't understand a word anyone says. As one claustrophobic day follows another, he wonders why no one has found him yet, whether his wife has given him up for dead, and how he'll get by in this society that looks so familiar, yet is so strange. In a vision of hell, unlike any previously imagined, Budai must learn to survive in a world where words and meaning are unconnected. This is a suspenseful and haunting Hungarian classic.
Metropole
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"I' don t know when I ve read a more perfect novel-a dynamically helpless hero (in the line of Kafka), and a gorgeous spiral of action, nothing spare, nothing wrong, inventive and without artifice." Michael Hoffman TLS --
"A Central european classic to be discovered and relished." --Eva Hoffman
"A masterpiece.' Magazine Litteraire 'A stunning novel." Liberation "With time, Metropole will find its due place in the twentieth-century library, on the same shelf as The Trial and 1984." --G. O. Chateaureynaud
"Nightmare is the only word that fully captures Karinthy's hellish metropolis, but while it's definitely a tale of horror, Metropole is also funny and touching." --National Public Radio
'A masterpiece.' Magazine Litteraire 'A stunning novel.' Liberation 'With time, Metropole will find its due place in the twentieth-century library, on the same shelf as The Trial and 1984.' G. O. Chateaureynaud --various
"A Central european classic to be discovered and relished." --Eva Hoffman
"A masterpiece.' Magazine Litteraire 'A stunning novel." Liberation "With time, Metropole will find its due place in the twentieth-century library, on the same shelf as The Trial and 1984." --G. O. Chateaureynaud
"Nightmare is the only word that fully captures Karinthy's hellish metropolis, but while it's definitely a tale of horror, Metropole is also funny and touching." --National Public Radio
'A masterpiece.' Magazine Litteraire 'A stunning novel.' Liberation 'With time, Metropole will find its due place in the twentieth-century library, on the same shelf as The Trial and 1984.' G. O. Chateaureynaud --various
About the Author
Ferenc Karinthy was born in Budapest in 1921. He obtained a PhD in linguistics, and went on to be a translator and editor, as well as an award-winning novelist, playwright, journalist and water polo champion. He wrote over a dozen novels. This is the first novel to be translated into English.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
18 of 18 people found the following review helpful
By SP Crowley
Format:Paperback
This is a stunningly good book about the nightmarish misadventures of Budai, a Hungarian linguist who, for reasons never explained, is diverted from Helsinki to an unnamed city. Here, bafflingly, considering his occupation, he can make neither head nor tail of the language, written or spoken. Deprived of this basic human need and, in the face of a population who are oblivious or even hostile to his plight he finds himself in a range of situations lovingly detailed by the other reviewers on this page who presumably want to save you the bother of reading the book. Karinthy (will someone please translate more of his work!) is clearly fascinated by language and how it gives us a hold on the world. In this city, linguistic structures appear to have fallen apart and the ramifications of this become clear towards the end.
The quotes that adorn the cover of this book are, for once, justified. If you want a reference point, Franz Kafka is an obvious one and Kazuo Ishiguro's 'The Unconsoled' but this book stands alone as a masterpiece.
The quotes that adorn the cover of this book are, for once, justified. If you want a reference point, Franz Kafka is an obvious one and Kazuo Ishiguro's 'The Unconsoled' but this book stands alone as a masterpiece.
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful
By Melmoth
Format:Paperback
Arriving, bleary-eyed and jet-lagged, in a foreign land, being forced this way and that by a crowd of people whose words one cannot understand, is an everyday experience in the world of EasyJet and RyanAir. The fact that it is everyday doesn't detract from its nightmarish qualities, however.
In Metropole, Budai, a linguist on his way to Helsinki for a conference, encounters this modern nightmare in its most extreme form. After leaving his plane and blearily taking the airport bus he finds himself in an almost endless city where every street, every building is thronged by representatives of the entire human multitude, none of whom Budai can understand.
Uncertain of where this new city is, unable even to hear the words of his fellow beings clearly and consistently, Budai finds himself jostling and kicking his way through life in a grim, grey metropolis. He lives - for a while, at least - in a large but characterless hotel, buys his food from the machines in a cafeteria, spends his days riding the nameless city's Metro in search of an escape and his nights either drinking in the cramped and sweaty city bars or locked away in his room, puzzling away at newspapers and telephone directories written in a script he cannot understand.
Unable to communicate with those around him, Budai's only human contact is with the woman who operates the lift in his hotel, a woman whose name he cannot even hear or pronounce consistently - is she Bebe, Ebede, Dede, Pepep, Debebe, Tyetye or Epepe?
Slowly Budai finds himself carried by the human crowd into strange religious ceremonies, into penury, into carnival and even into revolution and defeat - his only thoughts those of escape or of his unnameable new love.
Metropole is a brilliant study of the everyday alienation that so often goes with life in a modern city, a place that can be brusque and harsh and in which one is sometimes forced to question whether any of us truly speak the same language. At the same time it is a prescient (this was written in 1970) study of a world in which we are divided into either individuals or mobs, with no such thing as society to stand between the two states. Nonetheless it ends on a note of hope - something we all must do if we want to press on through our life today.
In Metropole, Budai, a linguist on his way to Helsinki for a conference, encounters this modern nightmare in its most extreme form. After leaving his plane and blearily taking the airport bus he finds himself in an almost endless city where every street, every building is thronged by representatives of the entire human multitude, none of whom Budai can understand.
Uncertain of where this new city is, unable even to hear the words of his fellow beings clearly and consistently, Budai finds himself jostling and kicking his way through life in a grim, grey metropolis. He lives - for a while, at least - in a large but characterless hotel, buys his food from the machines in a cafeteria, spends his days riding the nameless city's Metro in search of an escape and his nights either drinking in the cramped and sweaty city bars or locked away in his room, puzzling away at newspapers and telephone directories written in a script he cannot understand.
Unable to communicate with those around him, Budai's only human contact is with the woman who operates the lift in his hotel, a woman whose name he cannot even hear or pronounce consistently - is she Bebe, Ebede, Dede, Pepep, Debebe, Tyetye or Epepe?
Slowly Budai finds himself carried by the human crowd into strange religious ceremonies, into penury, into carnival and even into revolution and defeat - his only thoughts those of escape or of his unnameable new love.
Metropole is a brilliant study of the everyday alienation that so often goes with life in a modern city, a place that can be brusque and harsh and in which one is sometimes forced to question whether any of us truly speak the same language. At the same time it is a prescient (this was written in 1970) study of a world in which we are divided into either individuals or mobs, with no such thing as society to stand between the two states. Nonetheless it ends on a note of hope - something we all must do if we want to press on through our life today.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
By Sporus
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
A professor of etymology finds himself in an unknown city of enormous dimensions where the language cannot be interpreted and there seems to be no awareness of other cultures. Unable to make an impression on the populace beyond a fleeting affair with a blonde lift attendant his straits become ever more desperate.
That's it really - and it's a bit disappointing; an over-fed short story. The linguistic analysis is low-grade and best when played for laughs. The prose plods (variations of the sentence "Strange that he had never thought of this before, but..." crop up every fifteen pages) and overall the level of invention is low for a premise that holds such promise of fantasy.
No use complaining that the logic doesn't hold up (a country in Northern Europe that has bananas but doesn't have international references in the newspapers or in the shops? A man who spends most of his professional life in the library but never once thinks to go to one and seek out the dictionary section?); that's not the point. There are no solutions to the prof's dilemma. This is a nightmare.
Or rather, it's a Pilgrim's Progress about what a man goes through in order to have an affair (and a plea in absentia for the overlooked importance of domesticity). And that, at least, is refreshing in a genre that generally wants to play with big ideas.
That's it really - and it's a bit disappointing; an over-fed short story. The linguistic analysis is low-grade and best when played for laughs. The prose plods (variations of the sentence "Strange that he had never thought of this before, but..." crop up every fifteen pages) and overall the level of invention is low for a premise that holds such promise of fantasy.
No use complaining that the logic doesn't hold up (a country in Northern Europe that has bananas but doesn't have international references in the newspapers or in the shops? A man who spends most of his professional life in the library but never once thinks to go to one and seek out the dictionary section?); that's not the point. There are no solutions to the prof's dilemma. This is a nightmare.
Or rather, it's a Pilgrim's Progress about what a man goes through in order to have an affair (and a plea in absentia for the overlooked importance of domesticity). And that, at least, is refreshing in a genre that generally wants to play with big ideas.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
Alone in the Mother of Cities
Never fall asleep on a plane to Helsinki. Budai does so en route to a linguistics conference and, by the end of the first page, finds himself in an unknown city whose teeming... Read more
Published 21 days ago by Glimmung
1.0 out of 5 stars
Frustrating - and offensive!
I did not like this book. It was an interesting idea, but lacked plot and character development.
I found the racial descriptions of characters extremely offensive. Read more
I found the racial descriptions of characters extremely offensive. Read more
Published 1 month ago by Sairah
4.0 out of 5 stars
Compelling!
I found myself drawn into this book, compelled to read on even though it's absolutely not my usual read. Read more
Published 1 month ago by R. Murphy
4.0 out of 5 stars
terrifying and draining
I think I enjoyed this book! Read the first half avidly and got caught up in the tenseness and the character's inability to communicate. Read more
Published 1 month ago by like cooking
4.0 out of 5 stars
Brilliant
A recently translated masterpiece. What would you do if you suddenly found yourself in an unknown city, with no possibility of communication with the locals, and seemingly no means... Read more
Published 2 months ago by Rose East
5.0 out of 5 stars
Get Lost .....in Metropole
To read Metropole is to lose oneself in the story and the nightmare city it describes.
You will be absorbed within it, from the first few pages. Read more
You will be absorbed within it, from the first few pages. Read more
Published 6 months ago by Mark Noble
3.0 out of 5 stars
For everyone to read, for some to be impressed
After all the hype that accompanied the book when it was recommended to me, I was expecting a mind-blowing intellectual feast. Sadly, it didn't happen. Read more
Published 22 months ago by Agnieszka Knas
4.0 out of 5 stars
Good read - may have lost something in translation.
Borrowing heavily from The Trial, but original enough to warrant its own praise, Metropole is definitely a thought provoking read. Read more
Published on 12 May 2011 by Glenn Masson
5.0 out of 5 stars
Kafka's legacy truly honoured by this brilliant, mesmerising,...
Any number of modern, nightmarish novels are given the epithet of 'Kafkaesque', but most contemporary writers pale in comparison to the truly disturbing, oppressive, claustrophic... Read more
Published on 7 April 2011 by bobbygw
4.0 out of 5 stars
Alone In A Crowd
Examines the feelings and emotions we all get at times in crowded cities,that feeling of isolation,insignificance and confusion. Read more
Published on 23 Feb 2011 by Andy Vizor
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