{"id":5533,"date":"2026-10-08T13:41:53","date_gmt":"2026-10-08T13:41:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/szollosimatyas.hu\/en\/?page_id=5533"},"modified":"2026-10-08T13:46:01","modified_gmt":"2026-10-08T13:46:01","slug":"phobia-first-book-fobia-elso-konyv","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/szollosimatyas.hu\/en\/phobia-first-book-fobia-elso-konyv\/","title":{"rendered":"Phobia – first book \/ F\u00f3bia – els\u0151 k\u00f6nyv"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The first volume of novel Phobia<\/em> is the story of a young, successful theoretical physicist, Emilia, who travels to a small rural town to visit her grandmother in the first, uncertain days of the Corona-virus pandemic. Emilia is at home in the world of science: her work is based on the need to understand the world and to discover the laws behind phenomena. However, in her own life, she is confronted with the fact that there are things that she can neither rationally understand nor control. The outside world and her own past gradually become unpredictable for her. Events that initially seem random gradually lead her to the depths of a family past. Emilia comes across documents and photographs that reveal that her grandfather had twin sons from an extramarital affair. Her personal past is thus connected to three criminal stories: a previous murder in which an innocent person was convicted, a robbery in the present, and a child murder that has been unsolved for decades.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The real stakes of the novel, however, are not the detection of crimes, but the recognition of how family secrets and unresolved traumas transform a person\u2019s self-image. Emilia is an intelligent theoretical physicist who tries to interpret the world in terms of logical connections, models, and laws, yet in her own life she struggles with a constant lack of self-confidence and indecisiveness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The special power of the story is that personal and historical anxiety coincides with the collective uncertainty of the first days of the COVID pandemic. The gradual closure of the outside world runs parallel to the narrowing of Emilia’s inner world. The hospital, the bus, the bus station, the police and the country house all become different spaces of confinement and threat. The events of the present are constantly rewritten by memories and information emerging from the past, while the first-person narrative allows the reader to get close to Emilia’s uncertainty and increasing spiritual disintegration. Phobia can thus be read as a family novel, a psychological thriller and a crime novel, while also transcending these genres. Its central themes \u2013 trauma passed down through generations, family secrets, exclusion, injustice, fear and identity \u2013 are valid regardless of geographical and cultural boundaries. The theoretical physicist protagonist adds an additional, unique dimension to this: in the novel, the desire to understand the world rationally is confronted with the experience that one\u2019s own past, family and self cannot always be described in terms of simple laws.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the first volume of the novel, not only does Emilia\u2019s image of her family change, but her previous interpretation of her own life and personality also collapses. Ultimately, the book examines how the past \u2013 even when silenced and forgotten \u2013 can live on in subsequent generations, and how collective fear can become an inner crisis for a single person.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Helikon Publisher, Budapest, 2024<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Slovart, Bratislava, 2025 \/ https:\/\/www.slovart.sk\/knihy-v-slovencine-a-cestine\/beletria\/fobia.html?page_id=289533<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Excerpt in English, translated by Joe V\u00e1radi: https:\/\/losangelesreview.org\/phobia-by-szollosi-matyas-translated-by-joe-varadi\/<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Goodreads: https:\/\/www.goodreads.com\/book\/show\/205094031-f-bia<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The first volume of novel Phobia is the story of a young, successful theoretical physicist, Emilia, who travels to a small rural town to visit her grandmother in the first, uncertain days of the Corona-virus pandemic. Emilia is at home in the world of science: her work is based on the need to understand the world and to discover the laws behind phenomena. However, in her own life, she is confronted with the fact that there are things that she can neither rationally understand nor control. The outside world and her own past gradually become unpredictable for her. Events that initially seem random gradually lead her to the depths of a family past. Emilia comes across documents and photographs that reveal that her grandfather had twin sons from an extramarital affair. Her personal past is thus connected to three criminal stories: a previous murder in which an innocent person was convicted, a robbery in the present, and a child murder that has been unsolved for decades. The real stakes of the novel, however, are not the detection of crimes, but the recognition of how family secrets and unresolved traumas transform a person\u2019s self-image. Emilia is an intelligent theoretical physicist who […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/szollosimatyas.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/5533"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/szollosimatyas.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/szollosimatyas.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/szollosimatyas.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/szollosimatyas.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5533"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/szollosimatyas.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/5533\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5543,"href":"https:\/\/szollosimatyas.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/5533\/revisions\/5543"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/szollosimatyas.hu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5533"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}