Camilla Grudova & Jennifer Hodgson: Ágota Kristóf’s 'I Don’t Care'

Camilla Grudova and Jennifer Hodgson discuss the latest edition of the legendary Hungarian novelist’s short stories

Forced to leave her native Hungary by the 1956 suppression of the Hungarian Uprising, Ágota Kristóf took up residence in Switzerland and began writing in French. Most famous for her Notebook Trilogy – ‘A book through which I discovered what kind of person I really want to be’ (Slavoj Žižek) – her short stories, now available for the first time in English as the Penguin Classic volume I Don’t Care (tr. Chris Andrews), have been described by Max Porter as ‘pure genius’.

Canadian writer Camilla Grudova talked about Kristóf’s work and place in the late modernist literary firmament with Jennifer Hodgson.