Ferenc Körmendi

Ferenc Körmendi (12 February 1900, in Budapest – 20 July 1972, in Bethesda MD, USA) was a Hungarian novelist very popular in the period between the two world wars.

From an assimilated middle class Jewish background, Ferenc Körmendi studied law, history and music theory at university, afterwards working as an official and a journalist.

His literary breakthrough came in 1932, when he won an international competition organized by English language publishers in the UK and USA with his novel Escape to Life (Budapesti kaland).

[3] In 1939, after the implementation of anti-Jewish labour laws in Hungary, Körmendi emigrated to London, where he joined the Hungarian section of the BBC World Service.

The key to their success was their handling of ordinary human problems in novels about the ‘man in the street’ whose lives were just a little more adventurous than the common life of the middle class.

15 via Bodenbach, 1932, English translation 1935), experiments with the technique of interior monologue and free association, psychological flashbacks and complex presentation of a stream of consciousness, marred however by the theatricality of its ending.

[7] Weekday in June (Júniusi hétköznap, 1943) focuses on the single day of a young man who has lost his job due to the Hungarian anti-Jewish labour laws.

[8] A final novel, The Seventh Trumpet (1953, republished in 2011) expressed the author's criticism of the Hungarian Communist regime and was published under the pen name of Peter Julian.