Imre Kertész had to wait long before his book "Sorstalanság" (Fateless), which he spent more than a decade writing, was noted by literary critics. Only when it appeared in a new German translation under the title of "Roman eines Schickallosen" in 1995 did the writer from Budapest achieve his international breakthrough. The book has since been seen as one of the most important works in the European literature of the 20th century. Seven years later, the Hungarian was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature - "for writing that upholds the fragile experience of the individual against the barbaric arbitrariness of history". At the time, Imre Kertész was a fellow at the Wissenschaftskolleg Berlin (Institute for Advanced Study Berlin). He knows the city well. Back in 1993, he had already spent a number of months there as a guest of the DAAD's Artists-in-Berlin programme.

All the works of the Hungarian writer revolve around the topic of the Holocaust. "The Holocaust is a state that has not yet come to an end. I feel it everywhere. There is no catharsis. You cannot come to terms with the Holocaust." At the age of 15, Imre Kertész was deported to Auschwitz, in 1945 he experienced the liberation in Buchenwald: "As a child you trust in life, but when something like Auschwitz happens, everything collapses". In his novel "Sorstalanság", the author, journalist and translator describes the suffering in the concentration camp from the perspective of the Jewish boy György Köves. Naivety and lack of understanding, but also merciless openness and inevitable destiny characterise his story. Together with his two subsequent works "A kudarc" (Fiasco), and "Kaddis a meg nem születetett gyermekért" (Kaddish for a Child not Born), the novel forms a "Trilogy of Fatelessness". Further books are "Gályanapló" (Galley Diary) and "Valaki mas: A valtozas kronikaja" (I-Another: Chronicle of a Metamorphosis). 2003 saw the latest novel "Liquidation" published by the Thomas Mann admirer, a final look at the Holocaust in a Hungarian setting after the political change. 2004 saw his "Detective Stories" follow. Kertész has been an honorary doctor at the Free University Berlin since 2005.