The Centre of the World

By Béla Zelei

A book made out of love The Centre of the World book collection was the result of four generations’ efforts. The books focus on the 85 year old journalist who takes the reader back to the peasant’s life of the Hungarian plains int he 1930s and 1940s, from the viewpoint of the author’s father and his contemporaries. These stories were originally published in newspapers 45-50 years ago, but thanks to the author’s friends, former colleagues and son, they were moved from old newspapers into books form and were published. The fact that these brief insights into the Hungarian peasantry can be also read in English is due to the efforts of the fourth generation, the author’s grandson who attempted to transfer the unique style of the depicted world into an English format. This e-book is the electronic version of the miniature book collection published for the occasion of Béla Zelei, Sr.’s (1931-2018) 85th birthday in 2015, originally released both in Hungarian and English. The originaly Hungarian texts are also available in e-book format.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Underground Kiadó és Terjesztő Kft.
• Release date: Feb 27, 2020
• ISBN: 9786156151476

Book preview

The Centre of the World

Béla Zelei

2019

Underground Kiadó

www.undergroundkiado.hu

All rights reserved!

The following people have contributed to the making of this book:

Dr. László Kürti, university teacher, with researching

László Juhos, with the illustrations

Bahget Iskander, with the photograph of the author

Róbert Zelei, with translating the stories to English

Edmund Tugwell, with proofreading the English translations

Béla Zelei, Jr., with editing and publishing this book.

My father and his books

On the Storm Plains, where my father was born in 1931, peasant families only had one book in their possession: the Calendar. From this tome, people could find out everything they needed, and they could also jot down notes on the blank side of the pages, like 11st October: the cow got covered, or 3rd May: Béla was born today.

Apart from the Calendar, only cheap pulp novels made their way to the house near Baks where why father lived. Books like Bill – Whom Bullets Cannot Pierce got him to like reading. It was around this time when he got to know Zoltán Németh, who was a few years his senior, and who lived in the neighbouring village, studying at the Piarists. It was he who encouraged my father to continue his studies after finishing elementary school. Since the family could not afford this, the only possible way for him was the one uncle Zoli followed: becoming a priest at the Jesuits. During the summers, he studied Latin, and eventually he was accepted. There was a single reason for why my father did not become a priest: the Second World War.

Hungary came under Soviet influence. On the arrival of the Russian troops, my grandmother burned every single document that would have proved that the youngest of the Zelei family had clerical ties of any sort.

The People's Association of Colleges was an invention of the People's democracy. Instead of the support of the clerics, my father continued his studies at the People's college of Kiskunfélegyháza, then in Kalocsa, and finally in Szeged.

He always considered himself a teacher, although after finishing the teacher's training college of Szeged, he ended up in the editorial office of the county's newspaper, Storm Plains, and he soon found his own writing style while working with his experienced colleagues. Many have found the style of his reports and short stories similar to that of István Tömörkényi. The accusation of being a quasi epigone was not insulting to him. In