Announcing the festival, Balázs Keresztes, responsible for the foreign affairs programs of the Petőfi Cultural Agency, said, “For almost a decade, PesText has been one of the country’s most prestigious and beloved literary events [….] PesText is a celebration of world literature.”
This spring edition of the festival, which takes place twice a year, is organized by the Hungarian Literary Authors’ Collecting Society (MISzJE) with the support of the Hungarian Culture Foundation and the Petőfi Cultural Agency. Those with a literary bent can participate in discussions, readings, workshops for translators, and exhibitions. After a launch at the Petőfi Literary Museum, the free program will take place at the Drei Raben (Három Holló, or Three Ravens) café from 8-10 May.
Poet, children’s book writer and translator Árpád Kollár is the founder and director of the PesText International Literary and Cultural Festival. He is currently the director of the MISzJE. The festival was originally envisioned as “an international event that would put world literature in the spotlight while at the same time promoting Hungarian literature and culture abroad,” Kollár says.
To choose the authors who will appear at PesText, Kollár and his colleagues consult with “a wide range of partners and organizations, publishers, and cultural institutions while also relying on their personal tastes. In addition to well-known, popular authors, we strive to present emerging authors who may not yet enjoy widespread popularity in Hungary, but we believe they deserve it.”
For Kollár, the most exciting thing about the festival is “to invite world-renowned writers to Budapest and meet them in person. These conversations are a very inspiring intellectual experience for me. I believe that literature connects us, that art and culture can have a positive impact on open-minded people in today’s difficult world.”
One of the authors who will be appearing at PesText is Croatian writer Olja Savičević Ivančević. It will be her first time at the festival and only her second visit to Budapest.
“Adios Cowboy,” Savičević Ivančević’s debut novel published in 2010, tells the story of Dada, the heroine of the book. She’s a member of Croatia’s “lost generation,” living a humdrum life in Zagreb when she’s called back home to the Mediterranean town where she grew up to help her aging mother. Savičević Ivančević grew up in the small Dalmatian town of Kaštel Lukšić, near Split.
The novel received impressive plaudits from the international literary press. Prestigious U.S. magazine The Atlantic described it as a “wild amalgam of quest story, social satire, and comic schtick (plus a surreal film-shoot scene featuring cowboys), you won’t catch Savicevic offering tidy diagnoses. You won’t care, thanks to prose that glints like the sea in the distance.”
Since then, Savičević Ivančević has published another novel, “Singer in the Night” (2019), as well as collections of poems and picture books for children. She is currently writing a third novel with the working title “Dark Sky Archipelago.”
Her first collection of poems was published in 1988 when she was 14. Since then, she has focused mainly on prose and poetry. So far, her books have been translated into 11 languages, including Hungarian. She has published widely in magazines and won several important national and regional awards for her literary work as well as for children’s and youth theater.
For Savičević Ivančević, the reception of “Adios Cowboy” internationally meant, of course, more readers in Europe and the United States. This enabled other books of hers to be published.
“It’s not easy to reach readers worldwide if you’re writing in a language only spoken by a small number of people, but I think I have some very special things to say to the rest of the world,” she says.
“Translated literature can really be the bridge between people and can save our delicate humanity and give us courage and strength at a time when bridges are being burned and walls of indifference are growing,” she adds
Savičević Ivančević tells me that “my Budapest is primarily the city I’ve seen in movies and read about in books. I admire Béla Tarr, who I mention in one of my poems, and I enjoy reading the great Hungarian authors, including Magda Szabó, Molnár, Krasznahorkai, Márai, Kertész and Bodor.” She also enjoys seeing the city through the eyes of foreign writers and filmmakers, such as in Chico Buarque’s novel “Budapest” or Wes Anderson’s film “The Grand Budapest Hotel.”
Now, she’s looking forward to visiting Budapest in reality for the second time and catching up with old friends and colleagues. “I hope I will visit the city more often,” she says.
Whether you’re published or not, another writer’s working practices are always worth learning from. Savičević Ivančević starts writing every day soon after she gets up at 6:30 a.m. and makes coffee. She writes until 11 a.m. when she walks her dog or takes a nap.
“I try to cook meals at the same time as I write, but it never ends well,” she says. Her mornings are for writing, but “the evening is good for editing and reading.”
I ask Savičević Ivančević if she had any advice for authors in this part of the world who are keen to be published.
“Just write the best you can and let people see that. The rest is out of your hands in any case. Oh, yes, and always read good books.”
All PesText events are free, but some require prior registration. Find out more at pestextfestival.hu.
This article was first published in the Budapest Business Journal print issue of May 5, 2025.
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