György Dragomán: My mother, Europe
it seems obvious that Europe can mean nothing other than experiencing this sense of freedom again and again, that this is what it’s all about, so that every citizen...
Revolutions and their aftermath: interview with György Dragomán, author of “The White King”
Forgetting and remembering are contrary processes. You have to face up to your past but that’s almost impossible because forgetting overrules memory. I have been awed by this painful...
The US cover of The Bone Fire has arrived
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt will publish the novelin early 2016 but the cover is allready here. Very diffrent from the Hungarian one it has a lovely art-deco feel to it,...
The Bone Fire – I finished my third novel
Finishing a book is a magical moment. Here I am, proudly holding the complete Hungarian manuscript of my third novel The Bone Fire (Máglya in Hungarian). The pages are...
The Barnes and Noble Review looks at The White King
Amelia Atlas reviews The White King in The Barnes and Noble Review: “In the world of György Dragomán, it is hard to pinpoint the moment when humor begins to...
The New York Times reviews The White King
In The New York Times, Danielle Trusonni reviews The White King In “History and Utopia,” the Romanian philosopher Emil Cioran speculated about whether it’s “easier to confect a utopia...
The Washington Post reviews The White King
In The Washington Post Ron Charles looks at The White King: “Dragomán allows himself some room to experiment with tone and style, including a couple of oddly funny episodes...
Talk with Leonard Lopate on WYNC
Leonard Lopate had me on his show in New York:...
György Dragomán: Haul
The 2008 May issue of Words Without Borders is out, with one of my short stories about border crossing, Haul. Here is the opening: Zeus edged the bus in...
The San Francisco Chronicle on The White King
The San Francisco Chronicle looks at The White King. “In Hungarian writer György Dragomán’s harrowing novel “The White King,” set in a nameless place understood to be 1980s Romania,...
Review in The Tennessean
The Tennessean reviews The White King: “Dragomán finds fresh details to describe the hardships and terrors of life under totalitarianism, with its food lines, patriotic films and disappearances. But...
The Harvard Crimson on The White King
The Harvard Crimson looks at The White King. “This disconnect from their lived reality and the one the reader sees in the novel seems surreal. Dragomán is able to...
The Entertainment Weekley on The White King
A brief mention of The White King in Entertainment Weekley: “In a rushing stream of lucid language, 11-year-old Djata narrates a coming-of-age tale from somewhere behind the Iron Curtain,...
The New York Sun on The White King
In the April 16 issue of the New York Sun Benjamin Lytal takes a look at The White King: “Though the episodes that make up “The White King” all...
György Dragomán: Tulips
This is the first chapter of my novel, The White King. The night before, I stuck the alarm clock under my pillow so only I would hear it ring...
Audio-review of The White King in Radio New Zeland
Louise O’Brien reviewed the book in a show called Nine to Noon Books on Radio New Zeland. She likes a book quite a bit. You can listen to her...
Reviews in Marie Claire and The Sun
Tannaz Allaway in the Marie Claire about The White King: Through a sequence of vaguely connected episodes of boyhood, Dragoman’s award-winning second novel (and his first to be published in English) blends humour, innocence and...
A Brutal Boyhood – The White King reviwed in The Glasgow Herald
James Proteus in The Glasgow Herald calls the book a “darkly fascinating examination of the contrast between childhood innocence and a totalitarian regime. “ The review is not online, but here is a longer quote: The novel is constructed in short chapters that operate as...
Interview for The Word on BBC World Service
I talked to Harriett Gilbert about The White King in London, for the BBC World Service book programme, The Word. It aired yesterday, (February 5. 2008) and is can...
Reviews of The White King in The Independent and The Financial Times
In The Independent Paul Bailey calls The White King “a chilling novel” and “a most impressive debut”. The full text is here. A brief review of the book in...
Charles Fernyhough reviews The White King in the Sunday Telegraph
In the Sunday Telegraph Charles Fernyhough takes a closer look at The White King. “Djata’s childhood comes alive through its carefully detailed physicality. Dragomán is superb at the paraphernalia...
The White King reviewed in The Times by Tom Gatti
Tom Gatti has some very nice things to say about The White King in The Times. When my old English teacher tried to teach me the language back in...
Booktrust Review and Interview
James Smith from Booktrust reviews The White King on the site: “György Dragomán has succeeded in conjuring up not only a realistic voice for his young protagonist but also...
The Chain of Cruelty – Paul Binding reviews The White King for The Times Literary Supplement
In the current issue (January 17, 2008) of The Times Literary Supplement, Paul Binding reviews The White King. “Between these first and last chapters come sixteen vignettes, seemingly free-standing,...
Starred Review in the Kirkus Review for The White King
The current issue of the Kirkus Review has some nice things to say about The White King. The book got a starred review, with an intelligent summary of the plot which concludes in: “The...
The White King reviewed in The Mail on Sunday and in the Metro
The Mail on Sunday calls The White King a “coming of age tale with a difference”. The review concludes: “Glimpsed as it is imperfectly, through the eyes of a...
Tales of lunacy from the end of the world – Tibor Fischer reviews The White King for the Guardian
Tibor Fischer reviews The White King in the Guardian. “Dragomán’s work is an intriguing mixture. The White King is his second novel, published in 2005, but the first to...
“With The White King I wanted to write a book about freedom in a society where freedom should not be possible”
Tollef Mjaugedal interviewed me for Cappelen’s book club in Norway. The interview will be published translated into Norvegian, here is the English version: You grew up in Romania, but...
I’m working on, battling with the sentences
Erzsébet Eszéki interviewed me for Culture.hu Here is an excerpt. Your novel set in Romania reveals a terribly tough world. Not a very happy childhood. But from the perspective...
Review in The Publisher’s Weekly
The White King was reviewed in The Publishers Weekly. Here is an excerpt. “Dragomán draws from his eastern bloc upbringing in this brutal, fragmentary novel. Djata is an 11-year-old...
Remembering Romania
Sarah Nelson talked to me about The White King for the Publisher’s Weekly daily run at the Frankfurt Bookfair. Go here for the whole interview: PN online György Dragomán...
György Dragomán: The Myth of Horror
György Dragomán The Myth of Horror I wrote the following short piece for the Lahti Writers Reunion in Finnland. The central topic of the 2007 reunion was “Beauty and...
György Dragomán: ‘one can really see how a dictatorship functions through the eyes of a child’
György Dragomán: ‘one can really see how a dictatorship functions through the eyes of a child’ English translation of an interview I gave to Caffeé Babel on the first...
György Dragomán: Worlds out of Axioms
György Dragomán: Worlds out of Axioms (Expressing the New. My themes and style) I wrote this short essay about may work for the 2006 Seoul Young Writers festival. The...
György Dragomán: The Narrative Paradox
György Dragomán The Narrative Paradox The virus of nothingness in Samuel Beckett’s Watt An old essay I wrote about one of the most important books in my life, Watt,...
Message Board
I can be contacted through my agent, Chris Parris-Lamb of The Gernert Company: clambthegernertco.com You can email me at: dragoman.gygmail.com You can leave a message...
György Dragomán: Make your choice! – War
Source: HLO (Written for Litera‘s traditional pre-New Year Eve party entitled Make your choice!, 30 December 2005.) I wrote the story in two versions, the audience was offered a...