Ágota Kristóf

Chris Andrews

At a short story level, Kristóf – one of the 20th century’s great writers – reminds us what startling potential and transcendental power the form holds. The stories in I Don’t Care are fairytales from a strange and illuminating landscape

These stories are timeless stark fables – catnip for a readership that has developed a taste for existential angst

The stories in I Don’t Care by Ágota Kristóf might examine a small moment minutely or tell a person’s whole life in a handful of words… Fantastic

Her descriptions – of those with whom she escaped and whose sense of isolation eventually leads them back to Hungary even at the cost of their lives, as well as those whose sense of despair brings them to suicide – offer an uncomfortable insight into the extreme vulnerability of those obliged to seek asylum abroad

Mischievous and mournful… moves at a velocity that puts one in mind of Italo Calvino. Readers of modernist European fiction ought to snatch this up

Many of Kristóf's stark vignettes, reported in unflinching detail, have a cool, disturbing power – part documentary-like, part surreal that is fierce and distinctive

For Kristóf, fiction is the only thing that might provide an escape from solitude... Her novels likewise lead to an engagement with the world. They open things up because of how they undermine what we consider to be true; they shatter a supposed unity. Kristóf’s writing shows us both the pleasure and the necessity of literary refraction

Kristóf’s sentences are like skeletons, commemorations of indescribable sadness that have been meticulously scrubbed of gore and gristle. She seems to sculpt her stories by omission, the great unspoken throughout her books being Hungarian. One might think of Kristóf’s fiction as an act of recuperation, an expression of loss that preserves loss in the form

I don’t care: it’s not even pretty. The song is sad, and old, so old. 
 
I Don't Care presents the best short fiction by the Hungarian master Ágota Kristóf, selected by the author herself and available in English for the first time. Written immediately before her acclaimed Notebook trilogy, the works here oscillate between parables, surrealist anecdotes, and stories animated by a realism stripped to the bone. By turns harrowing and whimsical, cruel and sharply funny, Kristóf’s world shifts our gaze to a shared reality, past and present. Here exile and existential alienation are undeniable – as is the force of every sentence, making for extraordinary and essential reading.

I Don't Care

About us

About Us (Header 4)

Best-Jane-Austen-quotes_Online-Desktop_Penguin

James-Baldwin

Marian-Keyes

haruki-murakami-320×320-1

Richard-Osman

Malorie Blackman

Lisa-Jewell

Charlie-Mackesy

Authors (Header 3)

Children&#039;s

Company

Discover

Fiction

Non-fiction

Penguin Classics

Penguin Shop (Header 5)

Useful links

Work with us

The perfect gift? A Penguin Shop gift card

Ágota Kristóf

Praise for I Don't Care

Pure genius

At a short story level, Kristóf – one of the 20th century’s great writers – reminds us what startling potential and transcendental power the form holds. The stories in I Don’t Care are fairytales from a stran ...

These stories are timeless stark fables – catnip for a readership that has developed a taste for existential angst

Pure genius

At a short story level, Kristóf – one of the 20th century’s great writers – reminds us what startling potential and transcendental power the form holds. The stories in I Don’t Care are fairytales from a stran ...

These stories are timeless stark fables – catnip for a readership that has developed a taste for existential angst

Pure genius

At a short story level, Kristóf – one of the 20th century’s great writers – reminds us what startling potential and transcendental power the form holds. The stories in I Don’t Care are fairytales from a stran ...

These stories are timeless stark fables – catnip for a readership that has developed a taste for existential angst

Series by Ágota Kristóf

Penguin International Writers

Follow penguin

Follow ladybird

Follow puffin

Sign up to the Penguin newsletter