Everyone cares about Hungary

Notes on The Other Europe

‘No one really cares about Hungary,’ the British-Hungarian novelist Tibor Fischer lamented in his long form essay The Hungarian Tiger: ‘Growing up in Britain, I got used to pictures or footage of a Danish foreign minister or Slovak bobsleigher being passed off as the picture of a Hungarian Prime Minister. Budapest and Bucharest do sound similar. No one really cares about Hungary. That’s fine. There’s no need to pay attention to Hungary.

‘There’s really no requirement for non-Hungarians to be familiar with Hungarian history or its state. But non-payers of attention shouldn’t pretend they’re payers. Americans or Britons would find it absurd if a Hungarian who didn’t speak a word of English, who’d spent a weekend visiting their countries, started pontificating about their nations.’