Unreleased works by Hungarian author György Faludy to go under the hammer

Previously unreleased works by the late Hungarian author György Faludy are to be sold tomorrow at the Pinter Auction House in Budapest.

The works in question have been put up for auction by the author’s widow, Fanny Faludy and include erotic verse, notebooks, letters and other manuscripts. Starting bids are expected to range between 1000 and 1.5 million forints (between $4 and $5,200), with all proceeds going towards the upkeep of the writer’s legacy.

Faludy, who died in 2006, was one of the most celebrated Hungarian authors of the twentieth century and the recipient of the nation’s highest cultural honour, the Kossuth Prize, in 1994. Persecuted by successive governments from the 1930s onwards, he spent much of his life abroad, in Paris, London and Toronto. His most famous work is My Happy Days in Hell, a memoir of three years spent in the Recsk labour camp that was published in English in 1962 but not released in his home nation until 1987.

Fanny Faludy has stated that the auction is a financial necessity after local government in Budapest evicted the György Faludy Literature and Art Foundation, which holds the writer’s collections, over unpaid rent totalling 11 million forints ($38,200). It is expected that money raised from the auction will go towards acquiring new premises in which to house a mooted György Faludy Museum.

Source: Nepszava