Budapest 1900

A historical portrait of a city and its culture.

"The golden years that Lukacs sought, hoping to rescue the city's memory, stifled by the years of communism and, above all, by the myth created around the Vienna of the belle époque, were short-lived. The friendly and creative coexistence between the urban aristocracy, the wealthy landowners, and the rising bourgeoisie was swallowed up by the whirlwind of an unhealthy nationalism that ruined everything. It's difficult to fit Budapest 1900 into a specific category; the book mixes in roughly equal doses memory and political history, demographic study, and urban planning essay. What I do know is that, if the title hadn't already been used, Fragments of a Lover's Discourse would fit here like a glove." - Cora Rónai , journalist.

"Lukacs's Budapest, like Hemingway's Paris, is always a party." - Chilton Williamson Jr.