Unique in Hungarian literature, at the time of its first appearance in 1935, Towards the One & Only Metaphor was greeted with plaudits by such leading Hungarian critics as Laszlo Nemeth, Andras Hevesi, and Gabor Halasz, with Nemeth declaring: "Szentkuthy's invention has the merit that he pries writing open in an entirely original manner. . . Where everything was wobbling the writer either joins the earth-shaping forces, or else he sets up his culture-building laboratory over all oscillations. Seated in his cogitarium, even in spite of himself, Szentkuthy is brother to the bellicose on earth...

Considered an eerie attack on realism, when first published in 1934, Miklos Szentkuthy's debut novel Prae so astonished Hungarian critics that many deemed it monstrous, derogatorily referred to Szentkuthy as cosmopolitan, and classified him alien to Hungarian culture. Incomparable and unprecedented in Hungarian literature, Prae compels recognition as a serious contribution to modernist fiction, as ambitious in its aspirations as Ulysses or A la recherche du temps perdu. With no traditional narration and no psychologically motivated characters, in playing with voices, temporality, and events,...