Ágnes Harasztos: Review of the Volume Urban Culture and the Modern City, Hungarian Case Studies (2024)

Book review

DOI 10.51313/Freeside-2024-09

The volume Urban Culture and the Modern City, Hungarian Case Studies collects academic analyses of Hungarian literary representations of space. The studies investigate a historically and culturally varied spectrum of Hungarian literary spaces from Ferenc Molnár’s Budapest, to Géza Ottlik’s use of urban spaces, or to Krúdy’s fumigated small Buda taverns. Theoretically, these are seen from the perspective of the globally well-known and used concepts of the flaneur, of spatial appropriation, or of third space. By this, the collection aims at translating Hungarian culture into the globally understood theoretical language and view of spatiality studies. Consequently, this book fulfils a dual role which posits its studies in both the Hungarian literary critical scenery and in the global, English-speaking scholarship for which the Hungarian literary and cultural material is yet to be learnt. This latter function includes a popularizing mission which this book aptly fulfils.