Péter Zilahy


Péter Zilahy is a writer and performer whose prose and poetry has been widely translated and who has often used photography, interactive media and performance art in his work.

Literary work

His book of poems Statue Under White Sheet, Ready to Jump was published in 1993.
His play, Der lange Weg nach nebenan , has been performed at the Volksbühne Berlin.
His dictionary novel The Last Window-Giraffe'' was published in 1998 and has since been translated into 27 languages. He has had exhibitions at the Ludwig Museum Budapest and the Akademie Schloss Solitude in Germany.

The Last Window-Giraffe

The Last Window-Giraffe is a memoir about the absurdity of everyday life under a dictatorship. It is written in the style of a children's dictionary reflected in the title Window-Giraffe. The dictionary explained the whole world in simple words, where everything was in order and problems were always solved.
The book also describes the events of the Belgrade protest in 1996-97 as being symbolic of all protests in its courage and absurdity. The book is filled with Zilahy's own photographs, and is an insight into the world behind the Iron Curtain.
Reviews of this work have appeared in the FAZ, The Independent, the Neue Zürcher Zeitung, The Telegraph, and Die Welt.

Journalistic work

Zilahy has written for many journalistic outlets, including The Guardian, the New York Times, and The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.

Other work

Zilahy was editor-in-chief of Link Budapest, an Internet magazine for contemporary literature in English and Hungarian until 1999. He is the editor-in-chief of The World Literature Series.
Mr. Zilahy has held a wide range of artistic and literary residencies, including a residency at the John W. Kluge Center of the Library of Congress.