It’s been a long time coming for György Spiró. However much Hungarian writers complain about the isolation forced upon them by their non-Indo-European agglutinative language, the big names have always got through, maybe to a global shrug from the reading public, but they have made it out. And in fact, recently, the Magyar dead have done particularly well: Bánffy, Szabó, Szerb, Márai and Karinthy have found many British fans.
Though he’s better known as a dramatist in Hungary, Spiró’s massive novel Captivity was published there in 2005 to great acclaim. Now published in English (it has probably taken Tim Wilkinson this long to translate it), it follows the wanderings of Uri (a Jew, but a Roman citizen) across the Roman empire, with cameos for Christ, Pontius Pilate and Caligula.
Two major obstacles face a writer wanting to ferret into the Caesars and the start of Christianity: Robert Graves and Life of Brian (oh, and maybe Ben Hur too).
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