Zsófia Bán

Zsófia Bán (*September 23, 1957 in Rio de Janeiro) is a writer, literary historian, art and literature critic.

Zsófia Bán

Personal life

Zsófia Bán was born in Rio de Janeiro and grew up in Brazil and Hungary. She and her family returned to Hungary in 1969 where she studied English language and literature as well as Romance studies in Budapest (1976-81), Lisbon, Minneapolis and New Brunswick. She has worked in film studios, curated art exhibitions, was a fellow at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, research fellow at the John F. Kennedy Institut in Berlin, a Fulbright Fellow at Harvard University, as well as a writer in residence in Zug in Switzerland.

She lives and works in Budapest, where she is Associate Professor at Eötvös Loránd University, Department of American Studies.

From August 2015 to July 2016 Bán will be a writer in residence at the DAAD (German Academic Exchange Service) Artists-in-Berlin Program.

Writing

Zsófia Bán’s writing often addresses topics related to visuality, visual arts, photography, personal and cultural memory, historical trauma, as well as gender. She has written a number of essays related to the topic of literature and visuality, including those on W.G. Sebald, Susan Sontag, Imre Kertész and Péter Nádas. Her short stories and essays have been widely anthologized, and translated to a number of languages, including German, English, Spanish, Czech, Slovakian and Slovenian.

Bibliography

Fiction

• Amikor még csak az állatok éltek, Magvető, Budapest 2012. ISBN 978-96-31430-10-3
  • Als nur die Tiere lebten, translated by Terézia Mora, Berlin, Suhrkamp Verlag, 2014. ISBN 978-3-518-42424-7
• Esti iskola – Olvasókönyv felnőtteknek, Budapest/ Bratislava, 2007. ISBN 978-80-7149-921-3
  • Abendschule – Ein Fibel für Erwachsene, translated by Terézia Mora, Suhrkamp Verlag, 2012. ISBN 978-3-518-42289-2
  • Escuela nocturna, translated by José Miguel González Trevejo, Ediciones Siruela, 2015. ISBN 978-84-16396-11-5

Non-fiction

• Exponált Emlék – Családi képek a magán- és közösségi emlékezetben, ed. Zsófia Bán and Hedvig Turai, AICA/Argumentum, Budapest 2008. ISBN 9789630651950
  • Exposed Memory: Family Pictures in Private and Collective Memory, AICA-CEU Press, Budapest 2010. ISBN 978-9639776708
• Próbacsomagolás, Kalligram, Budapest/Bratislava 2008. ISBN 978-80-8101-056-9
• Amerikáner: A huszadik századi amerikai irodalom és mûvészet kultikus darabjai, Magvető, Budapest 2000.
• Desire and De-Scription: Words and Images of Postmodernism in the Late Poetry of William Carlos Williams, Amsterdam, Rodopi, 1999. ISBN 978-9042004634

Zsófia Bán has regular publications in magazines and anthologies.

Prizes

• 2014: International Literature Award (Shortlist)
• 2013: Glass Marble Prize
• 2013: Aegon Prize (Shortlist)
• 2012: Tibor Déry Prize
• 2009: Palládium Prize
• 2009: Mozgó Világ Prize
• 2008: Attila József Prize
• 2007: Balassa Péter Prize

Links

• Zsófia Bán – Official Website with complete publication list (Hungarian and English)
• Hungarian publishing house
• German publishing house