Hungarian author, sociologist and essayist who was on his country’s list of forbidden authors from 1977 until 1988

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Over the past 30 years Hungarian fiction has firmly established itself on the map of modern European literature, with writers such as Péter Nádas, Péter Esterházy and László Krasznahorkai widely known across the world. However, the renaissance of fictional writing in Hungary had already begun in 1969 with György Konrád’s short debut novel, A Látogató, which was translated into English in 1975 under the title The Case Worker.Konrád, who has died aged 86, used the book to subtly critique Hungary’s communist regime. But it was also an exceptional stylistic achievement, with sparse dialogue and long streams of consciousness. While the authorities disapproved of its themes – based around the life of a soul-searching social worker dealing with people with mental health problems – the Hungarian public responded much more positively, and the first pressing of A Látogató sold out in a few days.Later, in the mid-1970s, after being arrested and harassed because of his writing, Konrád agreed a compromise with the government under which he went unpublished in Hungary, but was allowed to travel and publish abroad. After communism fell in the late 80s he received his full due as a writer, and was acknowledged as one of the groundbreakers for the likes of Nádas, Esterházy and Krasznahorkai.Konrád was born into a Jewish merchant family in Debrecen and grew up in Berettyóújfalu, close to the Romanian border; his father, József, and his mother, Róza (nee Klein), owned a hardware shop in the small town. In 1944, when the German army occupied Hungary, days before the ghettoisation and deportation of the Jewish po[CENSORED]tion from the countryside began, György and his sister, Éva, were sent to relatives in Budapest – a decision that almost certainly saved their lives.Sign up for Bookmarks: discover new books in our weekly emailRead moreAfter the second world war he went to school first in Debrecen and then in Budapest, and in 1951 was accepted at the Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest to study Russian and literature. He was briefly expelled from the university by the authorities, who deemed him a “class alien” due to his bourgeois background, but was readmitted in 1953 during the reformist prime ministership of Imre Nagy, switching to study Hungarian literature and graduating in 1956 shortly before the Hungarian revolution erupted.Konrád fully supported the revolutionary call for independence and a multiparty system, and joined the pro-revolutionary National Guard. But when the Soviets crushed the revolution, he abandoned his tommy-gun in a dark alleyway.Just before the revolution Konrád had had his first piece published in the periodical Új Hang (New Voice).He joined a group of young aspiring writers and artists who met regularly in a Budapest coffee house, and, after an unsettled period working in various temporary jobs, found a permanent position as a social worker in the city.His six years of experience in that job were used in his first novel and his next job, as a sociologist at the Institute of Urban Planning, gave him material for his following novel, A Városalapító, which was published in censored form in Hungary in 1977 and translated in the same year into English under the title The City Builder.By this time Konrád had become a political player due to the clandestine publication of a study translated into English as The Intellectuals on the Road to Class Power that he had written with the sociologist Iván Szelényi. Copies of the publication, which argued against the Marxist view that the communist system is a dictatorship of the proletariat, were confiscated by the Hungarian security police and he and Szelényi were arrested – although as a result of international protests they were soon released.Szelényi subsequently emigrated, but Konrád chose to stay in Hungary on condition that he received a permanent exit visa enabling him to publish and teach in Germany and the US. It was in New York that he wrote his third, most Hungarian, novel, A Cinkos (The Loser, published in English in 1983) with a brilliant chapter, The Feast Day, about the beginnings of the 1956 revolution, which Konrád said was “the only event of world historical significance that we Hungarians accomplished in this [the 20th] century”.Since he was on the list of Hungary’s forbidden authors from 1977 until 1988, Konrád’s two political studies: Az Autonómia Kisértése (The Temptation of Autonomy, 1980) and the excellent Anti-politica (1986) were only published abroad. In these he positioned himself as a left-liberal thinker and staunch opponent of all authoritarian regimes, a role he continued to fulfil until his death.In 1990, after the fall of communism, he was awarded the state-sponsored Kossuth prize for literature, was elected president of the International PEN Club, and became a member of the council of a new Hungarian political party, the Free Democrats, which was in opposition to the government. In 1991 he was a founder of the Demokratikus Charta movement, which campaigned against the autocratic inclinations of Hungary’s first post-communist administration under József Antall.As incidents of antisemitism in Hungary rose, Konrád produced several writings on Jewish themes, while Kerti Mulatság (A Feast in the Garden, 1987) and Kőóra (Stonedial, 1994) were mostly autobiographical, similarly to the texts that went into the volume A Guest in My Own Country (2013).His opposition to the populism that has been stifling Hungary over the past nine years was made clear in his last two nostalgic essay-novels, Ásatás (Excavation I-II) with the subtitles Falevelek a Szélben (Leaves in the Wind, 2017) and Öreg Erdő (An Old Forest, 2018).Konrád received many awards and honours, of which the most important were the Herder prize (1983), the Central European prize (1998) and the International Charles prize of Aachen (2003). In his last years he spent most of his time in the family house at Hegymagas, a village close to Lake Balaton.He is survived by his third wife, the author Judit Lakner, by their three children, Áron, József and Zsuzsanna, and by a son and daughter, Anna and Miklós, from his second marriage, to Júlia Lángh, which ended in divorce.• György Konrád, writer, born 2 April 1933; died 13 September 2019Since you’re here...... we have a small favour to ask. More people are reading and supporting The Guardian’s independent, investigative journalism than ever before. And unlike many new organisations, we have chosen an approach that allows us to keep our journalism accessible to all, regardless of where they live or what they can afford. But we need your ongoing support to keep working as we do.The Guardian will engage with the most critical issues of our time – from the escalating climate catastrophe to widespread inequality to the influence of big tech on our lives. 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