Omertà. Buch des Schweigens

Jury’s comment

Omertà by Andrea Tompa has been excellently translated from Hungarian into German by Terézia Mora. The novel focuses on the area around the city of Cluj-Napoca, a former Hungarian province. Through the example of four characters, geopolitical and ideological upheavals become clear in their self-evident and inescapable language. A book amid abrupt actions, Stalinist purges, silences and oral narrative tradition: progress and folklore. The combination of individual biography, vocal force and contemporary history, the intermingling of dialogue, indirect speech and inner monologue results in a pull that places the characters in close. They are characters given a literary wisdom that makes them at the same time, and so it must be, human beings and characters of novels. Omertà shows the immediacy of a reality of people who are overwritten by wars, and what soon calls itself history, and yet are always capable of their own testimonies.

– Heike Geißler

Author: Andrea Tompa

Andrea Tompa studied Slavic languages and works as a theater critic. Omerta. Hallgatások könyve (Omertà. Buch des Schweigens) is her third novel and her first book translated into German. She has lived in Budapest since 1990.

Translator: Terézia Mora

Terézia Mora is a writer, screenwriter and translator. She has degrees in Hungarian studies and theater studies and trained as a screenwriter at the German Film and Television Academy in Berlin. Since 1998, Mora has worked as a freelance author and translates Hungarian literature into German.