Erika Náray and special guest: János Háy / Crazy About Jazz

14 November 2019, Thursday
8 pm — 11 pm

Gyalog megyek hozzád a sétálóúton, the first volume of work from the poet and writer János Háy, published in 1989, began with the following sentence: 'The person named János Háy does not exist.' This non-existent person was born in a small isolated settlement, Vámosmikola, in 1960. While his hometown roots have played a defining role throughout his life, his personality was significantly shaped by the alternative culture of Hungary's capital. Though he was still a first-year high school student, by 1974 he was already attending rock concerts and contemporary music and painting events. It seems that his teachers gave him bad grades in an attempt to bring him back to the straight and narrow, awarding him a two (equivalent to grade D) in literature, for example. After his high school years, Háy secretly yearned for a rock music career: he was an active musician for a time, before getting tied up in poetry at the start of the 1980s. After attending the University of Szeged in the Russian History Department, he completed his studies at the Department of Aesthetics at ELTE. He worked as a teacher until 1989, before spending five years working as an editor for book publishers (Holnap, Pesti Szalon, Palatinus). To date, Háy has seen 18 books published, with short prose writings, novels and dramas alongside poems, as well as countless drawings and paintings, for which he illustrates and designs the covers for the books himself. He has published volumes of short stories (A bogyósgyümölcskertész fia, Házasságon innen és túl) and three novels (Dzsigerdilen. A szív gyönyörűsége, Xanadu. Föld, víz, levegő, A gyerek), while in recent years he has also enjoyed success as a playwright. His plays, including A Gézagyerek, Herner Ferike faterja and A völgyhíd, have been translated into several languages and also staged abroad.

Audience members, who will be able to take their seats in the Bohém Restaurant on a first-come, first-served basis from 6 pm, receive a welcome drink and can enjoy dinner before or after the concert.