Alternating current / Váltóáram

With his first volume of short stories, Alternating Current, Mátyás Szöllősi burst into Hungarian literature due to his unique voice and strong, bewildering storylines in a manner similar to Wells Tower and Paolo Giordano vis-à-vis American and Italian literature some years ago. The book won the Margó Award for the best first prose volume in Hungary in 2017. The volume, which includes nine short stories is built around a very unusual event, the explosion of a supernova, which can be seen in the sky during the events related in the stories, evoking an apocalyptic atmosphere in each piece. Szöllősi’s short stories can be interpreted separately – each is a tense dramatic text describing psychological and physical processes with detailed precision – yet they can also be read as a novel-like flow in which the lives of nine people entwine into a whole. The stories probe varied themes and social issues, such as humiliation, racial discrimination, mourning and dependence. Travelling is a very important element and so is exploring the characters’ external and internal world, which is enforced by genuinely vivid and lifelike dialogues. This volume is entirely unique with its meticulous, detailed images, sometimes film-like descriptions and human fates, which readers can clearly understand and relate to, as well as with its delicate web of references linking the texts.

Európa Publisher, Budapest, 2016 / Helikon Publisher, Budapest, 2026

Margó Prize – for the best first prose volume (2017)

Spiral – translated by Katalin Rácz: https://hlo.hu/new-work/matyas-szollosi-spiral.html

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/33778903-v-lt-ram