Prompted by a class reunion, HOME deals with the experience of homecoming after extended absence and engages with the archaeology of the self in the context of estrangement and belonging. Having taken the decision to emigrate decades earlier, Tompa’s unnamed protagonist is caught between two worlds, navigating a journey from one homeland to another, and suddenly facing an upsurge of revelations that have a strong emotional impact. HOME takes in landmark events from the past, starting with the youthful ease with which the protagonist had set off on an adventure of a lifetime, and continuing with the personal stories of former classmates – some also scattered around the world, and others who decided to stay put. HOME negotiates diverse orders of experience and presumed difference without being judgmental, and attention is being drawn to ongoing change over time – be it in the lives of those who opted to stay or to leave.
“At a time when nationalism is dangerously on the rise in Hungary (and elsewhere), a title such as ‘Home’ could easily be classed as provocative. Tompa’s notion of ‘home’ harks back to a pre-nationalist era, privileging the personal memory of the narrator, intertwined with the memories of those whose lives are connected to that of the protagonist’s. In an almost thriller-like episode, we get to follow the daily itinerary of the narrator’s father, based on denunciating undercover informer reports. Home in this case is constructed in response to a mental map attached to the father, from the perspective of a government snitch. In parallel with this, we get a sense of alienation by witnessing the narrator check into a hotel while visiting their hometown, readers thus being confronted with the notion of home in speech marks so to speak: ‘home’ incorporating broader and broader connotations, informer reports and distorted perceptions of identities included.”
--Robert Milbacher, Élet és Irodalom
“….Home is simply trying to pose some questions about identity, its loss or transformation through time. One’s home in the twenty-first century is not fixed but a moveable feast, no longer found in one’s homeland nor in the land of one’s “adoption,” it is dependent on the individual with his or her official citizenship."--World Literature Today
Jozefina Komporaly is a London-based academic and translator from Hungarian and Romanian into English. She studied English and European literature before gaining a PhD in Drama and Comparative Literature from the University of Warwick. She is currently based at the University of the Arts in London, having previously taught drama and translation at Warwick, Hull, DMU and Cardiff. She is editor and co-translator of several drama collections, and author of numerous publications on translation, adaptation and theatre. Her translations appeared in prestigious literary magazines and were produced by Foreign Affairs, Trap Door, Theatre Y and Trafika Europe Radio. Recent publications include ‘Mr K Released’ by Matéi Visniec (finalist for the 2021 EBRD Literature Prize) and ‘Story of a Stammer’ by Gábor Vida (Seagull Books, 2022). Her forthcoming translation ‘Home’ by Andrea Tompa (Istros Books, 2024) was the recipient of a PEN Translates Grant.
Andrea Tompa is an award-winning Hungarian novelist, academic and theatre critic based in Budapest. She is former editor of the leading theatre journal Szinhaz (Theatre) and is a member of the prestigious Szechenyi Literary and Arts Academy. To date, Tompa published four acclaimed novels: The Hangman's House/A hoher haza (Kalligram, 2010; translated into English by Bernard Adams, Seagull Books, 2020 - longlisted for the Oxford-Weidenfeld Translation Prize 2022), Top to Tail/Fejtol es labtol (Kalligram, 2013), Omerta (Jelenkor, 2017 - translated into German by Terezia Mora, Suhrkamp, 2022) and Haza/Home (Jelenkor, 2020) - all dealing in different ways with the history of the Hungarian community in Transylvania (Romania), and for which she received numerous prestigious awards.
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