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2011-12:
No Matter Where I Am, I See the Danube
—Autobiography of Thomas KABDEBO
with foreword by Árpád Göncz, President of Hungary 1990-2000.
[• click here to preview sample pages of this book on PDF >]
A gripping personal story that is also the dramatic story of 20th century Hungary.
"He was rendered cosmopolitan by Hungarian history," the President of Hungary, Árpád Göncz, writes of the author. "His homeland was twice trodden by occupying armies, and as a consequence, hundreds of thousands of its people were forced to flee their country, making their living elsewhere."
Illustrated Hardback (with photograph plate sections, printed endpapers, head+tail bands):
ISBN: 978-1-908420-046, r.r.p.: £21.00 / €25.00
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Born to a prosperous family in 1930s Hungary, Tom Kabdebo was a schoolboy in the post-war Stalin years when ten percent of Hungarian men (including his father and uncle) were sentenced to prison and to the loss of all possessions.
To pay for his education, and to help support his stepmother and siblings, he worked at labouring jobs, including underground in a coal mine where the temperature was 40°C.
In 1956, as a student in Budapest, he took part in the Hungarian Revolution—his diary of those few extraordinary days is reproduced in this book. Because of his involvement, he had to flee the country, along with 200,000 others.
Tom Kabdebo's first-hand experience of the often cruel reality of life in Central and Eastern Europe after World War II, and of the hardships (as well as the infinite possibilities) of life as a refugee, has been captured unforgettably in this compelling, deeply honest book.
Dr Thomas Kabdebo is the author of more than forty books, the translator of a further forty books, and has received numerous literary and other awards—including the Hungarian Order of Merit, the Péterfy Life Achievement Award, the Füst Grand Prix for translation, and the International Poetry Prize.
Born in Budapest in 1934, he escaped to the West from his native Hungary after participation in the 1956 Revolution. He has lived in Britain (where he directed the University Library of Westminster), in Guyana (where he directed the University Library of Georgetown), and finally settled in Ireland, where he became Director of Maynooth University Library. He now lives in Newcastle, County Dublin.
Thomas Kabdebo's autobiography was launched at the Embassy of the Republic of Hungary—Magyar Köztársaság Nagykövetsége, Dublin.
Boldog Új Évet! to all of Phaeton's Hungarian friends.
