Kertész, who was awarded the Nobel prize for literature in 2002 for his novel Fatelessness, was born in Budapest in 1929 and deported to Auschwitz in 1944, at the age of 14. Fatelessness is based on his experiences as a survivor of the concentration camp, told through the eyes of a fictional character. Initially refused by publishers under Hungary’s communist regime, the book was eventually published in 1975.
Upon receiving the Nobel prize, Kertész said that he sees in the award that Europe was again “in need of the experience [that] witnesses of Auschwitz and the Holocaust were forced to gain.”
“Imre Kertész is a free man,” wrote Hungarian historian Mária Schmidt in 2014 in an article honoring his works. “He has remained [a free man] under both anti-human, totalitarian dictatorships, against and despite both. And he is still. God bless him.”
In 2014, the president of Hungary made Kertész a member of the Order of Saint Stephen of Hungary. His other works published in English include Kaddish for an Unborn Child and Liquidation.