I just bought László Krasznahorkai's Sátántango, mainly because it was translated and recommended by the insomniac Hungarian genius George Szirtes, whose Twitter stream is the most riveting literary experiment operating in this country. The cover tweaked a memory: I dragged this down from the shelf:
There are differences of detail, but in look and mood they're virtually indistinguishable. That was the paperback, from 2003, but here's Viking's original hardcover edition, from 2001:
At least there's a (human?) figure here, though hardly in the foreground. This is one of the odder pieces of stereotyping I've come across: those crazy Hungarians with their forests and their Garamond and their embossed gold titles and their overpowering air of melancholy, eh?
