The Garden of Diogenes

Robert Hász (ENG)

The narrator of this novel (clearly autobiographical) abandons his country ripped apart by civil war and goes to the neighboring country. However, the uprooted feeling creates a heavy atmosphere around him. He lives from hand to mouth and takes refuge in the wait and inactivity.

He is torn between two worlds : the real one, incarnated by two strange individuals, Zénon and Simon, who try to pry him away from his lethargy ; and a spiritual one into which a bum named Diogenes pushes him to enter. The narrator hesitates, but when he realizes that he is no longer able to integrate into society, that his marriage is a failure, he joins Diogenes, his car cemetery and his strange stories.

« What interests me, he says, is man himself and his role in History ; in other words : man, slave to the materialist world, in antiquity as in the present, and his connection with the transcendental world ; that’s what truly interests me. », Robert Hász

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Presse & Librairie

Claude Mourthé, Le Magazine Littéraire

« Que chercher et, éventuellement, que découvrir, après cette négation absolue du progrès ? Un homme, peut-être. Ou bien l’éternité. »

Marie Leroy, Page des Libraires

« Un premier roman plein d’imagination et savamment maîtrisé. À découvrir sans tarder. »

Jean-Maurice de Montremy, Livres Hebdo

« Avec ce premier roman, Róbert Hász témoigne d’un pessimisme caustique assez fréquent chez les rescapés du délabrement de l’Europe centrale qui ne croient ni aux vertus du business, ni au progressisme d’État, ni à l’optimisme de la science. En revanche, l’insolite et la poésie – notamment celle des catastrophes – leur sont un monde d’expression presque spontané. Ce qui nous vaut cette trouvaille faite par Viviane Hamy… »