FOREIGN HANSER RIGHTS - Hanser Literaturverlage

FOREIGN
ZSOLNAY
RIGHTS
Evelyn Schlag
Die grosse Freiheit des Ferenc Puskás
Ferenc Puskás’s Great Freedom
Novel. 240 pages. Hardcover
Publication date: July 25, 2011
Two men meet quite by chance on the Austrian-Hungarian border. But what at
first seems sheer coincidence rapidly gathers momentum, developing a life of its
own that leads them to a common past.
At a defunct petrol station in the south of Vienna, lawyer Valentin Görtz comes across a
confused Hungarian by the name of László Földesch. They do not know one another, they
have never met before, and yet their life stories are closely intertwined.
October 1956, in front of a barracks near the Hungarian border: shots ring out, people
stumble, topple over one another, blood flows in streams. It is the end of Hungary’s great
dream of freedom. István Földesch is injured and takes flight across the 'green border' with
his wife Etelka and their twelve-year-old football fanatic son László (Laci). The little family
soon manages to find work in an Austrian dairy. Földesch, a skilled craftsman, remains very
much a foreigner, but the 'little Hungarian woman', who speaks good German, soon rises to
the position of personal assistant to the director. Her promotion plays a part in helping Laci,
an avid fan of the legendary Hungarian striker Ferenc Puskás, to go to university.
Valentin Görtz’s father had been a lawyer too. In the wake of the curious encounter at the
petrol station, it emerges that Görtz senior had been hired by the Austrian dairy where the
Földeschs worked. And for Valentin’s partner Katharina, too, the emergence of Laci's memories
triggers a great deal more than mere reminiscences.
Evelyn Schlag
born in 1952 in Waidhofen an der Ybbs, where she still lives today. She studied German and
English. Zsolnay’s most recent publications are the novel Architektur einer Liebe (2006) and
the poetry anthology Sprache von einem anderen Holz (2008).
F I CTI O N