Földvári Books

Samizdat Edition

Kundera, Milan

Tréfa. [The Joke.]

Budapest: AB Független Kiadó, 1987. In publisher’s illustrated wrappers, designed by László Rajk. Samizdat edition. First Hungarian edition. 372, (2) p. In fine condition.

Samizdat edition of Kundera’s 1967 novel “The Joke”, that was banned in the Communist Hungary.

Kundera’s novel “The Joke” was first published in the time of the political liberalization in Czechoslovakia in 1967, just prior to the Prague Spring. The book was immediately translated into Hungarian and was about to be officially published in 1968. However due to the invasion of Czechoslovakia by the Warsaw Pact nations, among them Hungary in August 1968, the already printed and bound volumes never reached the bookstores, the title became banned, and most copies were destroyed. Eventually, twenty years later, in 1986, the book was first published in Hungarian, still underground, in this samizdat edition, by the AB Független Kiadó (AB Independent Publisher).

Samizdat editions, mostly political pamphlets, appeared in Hungary in the 1970s in the poor form of carbon copies of typescripts. Later in the 80s the so-called Democratic Opposition in Hungary established semi-underground publishings, like “AB Független” to publish not merely political literature but also literature that was banned by the Communist politics, among others the works of Milan Kundera or George Orwell.

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Price: €600.00