Bálint Harcos

Poet, writer, children’s author, born in 1976 in Budapest, Hungary. He has been publishing poetry and prose since the age of twenty-one, but also essays, studies, feuilletons and literary translations. His first book, Harcos Bálint Összes [’Bálint Harcos Total’], was released in 2002, followed four years later by Naiv Növény [’Naïve Plant’], which won the Sándor Bródy Prize for the best debut prose book of the year. The latter volume has also been translated into German (Naive Pflanze, 2008) and Czech (Naivní Rostlina, 2013). In addition to these, his other poetry and prose works have been translated into English, Slovak, German and Russian. After Naiv Növény, he published almost nothing for ten years. In 2015, he released his first children’s book, marking his return to the literary scene. Since then, he has published eighteen children’s books with the publishing house Pagony, including a fairy tale novel, fairy tales in verse and short story collections. His children’s books have been adapted into numerous works (animated short films, plays, chamber music, puppet show, poetry set to music, reading theatre performances). His fairy tale in verse, A boszorkánycica [’The Witch Kitten’] (2018) won the Children’s Book of the Decade Award in Hungary, and a play of the same title was made for symphony orchestra from the text – its premiere took place in Debrecen in May this year. A seven-part series of his children’s books has been published in Chinese, and his novel Petya és Tulipán [’Pete and Tulip’] (2016) has been translated into French (Pierrot et Narcisse). This year will see the publication of the Czech version of his collection of absurd tales, A halandzsarablók [’The gibberishburglars’] (2020), translated by Robert Svoboda, by Protimluv publishing house in Ostrava. His most recent children’s book is Szinbád [’Sinbad’] (2024), a longer story in verse based on the original text of the Thousand and One Nights. Last year, after a break of seventeen years, he released a fiction book entitled SZÉRIA [’SERIES’], an excerpt from the title cycle of it is included here in the anthology.