Zoltán Egressy: A hundred thousand mulberries; lecture and discussion

Literary lecture and discussion 

The second novel of the globally acclaimed author of Portugal unfolds as a utopia stemming from the present, transcending all current issues, with real stakes. According to our sources, Francesco Ventoso, a prominent member of the Executive Council of the World Meteorological Organization, a renowned wind and storm researcher, arrived in Hungary last night in complete secrecy.The Swiss-based organization, representing nearly two hundred countries, has been closely monitoring the weather anomalies in the Carpathian Basin practically from the beginning. Despite several inquiries and explicit requests, the organization did not receive an invitation from Budapest, even though the Hungarian capital is supposedly the starting point and epicenter of the windless conditions increasingly worrying the entire world.The lives of six people become entangled under a mulberry tree on Margaret Island during a raging storm. Six solitary individuals with stories and connections to each other, though it remains unclear whose, with whom, and what. It's as if the wind and chance brought them together to unravel all of this.

The backdrop of the intense and stirring investigative maneuvers from all sides is Hungary, struck by the peculiar weather anomaly. As the story progresses and the calm after the storm settles not only on the lungs but also on the hearts, the background slowly advances to the foreground, taking control over individual destinies:

"It is some kind of awakening after all, but not from a dream, but from reality into another reality. The lights change immediately as the rain stops, Scandinavian in type. They wouldn't know this; Orsolya would if she were with them. The silence is profound, unlike anything they've ever heard. It's not just silence; it's emptiness, total vanishing, irreversible lifelessness, deadly nothingness, a maddening stillness..."

Egressy Zoltán engages in a conversation with Dr. Andrea Duba, an active analyst and therapist, and Kiss Noémi, a writer.

The event is supported by the Hungharian Society of Writers.