Beyond the Cordons

Gábor Schein is the highly acclaimed author of over nine volumes of poetry and five novels, as well as the recipient of many prizes, including the Attila József Prize, the Artisjus Prize, and the Prize of the Society of Hungarian Authors. Beyond the Cordons is a selection of his poetic work over the past twenty-five years, but particularly drawing on his seminal collections Night, Travel [Éjszaka, utazás, 2011] and Greetings from the Interior of the Continent [Üdvözlet a kontinens belsejébl, 2017] both of which serve as poetic time capsules of the decades following Hungary's "regime change" of 1989. Schein's urban sensibilities are palpably and keenly attuned to the grit and debris of Budapest streets - as well as the ever-present echoes of its sinister past, its buried histories - and yet allegorically, his poetry soars above place and time. He writes with the perspective of an insider navigating not only the immediate present of corruption and cynicism, but with a view to examining its affective residue on the people, and even the buildings.