Sándor Jászberényi

Sándor Jászberényi is the author of The Most Beautiful Night of the Soul: More Stories from the Middle East and Beyond (forthcoming January 2019, New Europe Books) and The Devil Is a Black Dog: Stories from the Middle East and Beyond (New Europe Books, 2014). In 2017 he received Hungary’s Libri Literary Prize. As a correspondent and photojournalist for Hungarian news sites, he has covered the conflict with the Islamic State, the unrest in Ukraine, the revolutions in Egypt and Libya, and the Gaza War. His writing has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times Magazine, the Irish Times, AGNI, BODY Literature, and the Brooklyn Rail. He divides his time between Budapest and Cairo.

Fiction Conflict MENA

The Emperors of Existence

An excerpt from the short story collection by Sándor Jászberényi, translated from the Hungarian by Paul Olchváry December 28, 2018

It’s not good if you’re a man, and alone, when others are fucking your kid’s mother. I got on my leather jacket and left. I took a cab all the way down the Corniche, along the Nile.