In ‘Negro perhaps’ (Sexto Piso), the first book of stories by the Hungarian Attila Veres (Nyíreghyháza, 1985) to be published in Spain, there are women who bite dogs, lonely guys who tag porn videos on the Internet and fields irrigated with snail oil that hide murky secrets. Also insane sects, demons of the guard that accompany old glories of heavy metal and a little (or a lot) of Lovecraftian horror reinvented under the urban breath and the prism of black, very black humor. Fantastic stories with their feet attached, screwed rather, to harsh reality. “Basically, I am reconstructing the idea of the fantastic from scratch,” suggests Veres, passing through Barcelona to participate in the Fantastic Genres Festival. In his favor is, for example, the story that gives the anthology its title, a virguería of country horror with traces of political denunciation that reads as if Michael Haneke had crashed at full speed into a Stephen King story. Multiple collision, total loss. Mariana Enríquez, who knows about this for a while, has already placed it on her altar of favorite contemporary books. “I need more of her black magic,” announces the Argentine, evangelical, in the prologue of the Spanish edition of ‘Negro perhaps’. The English one, published last year, made him the first Hungarian author to be nominated for the Bram Stoker Awards. “I think I’m trying to capture the Hungarian experience, capture it at a very basic and visceral level, and then be able to introduce fantastical elements,” explains Veres, a filmmaker by training and passionate about the dark side since he bought his first Stephen King book and discovered , almost by accident, to John Carpenter. In that ‘Hungarian experience’, he adds, there is room for everything from the echoes of communism to the political and social tensions of the Orbán era. «I wouldn’t say that I saw communism fall, because I was four years old or something like that, but I do remember growing up in an environment of turmoil, in a world that had just collapsed and had not been able to rebuild itself. Then I also experienced a kind of enthusiasm, the whole positive atmosphere at the beginning of the century, when we joined the European Union. Things looked promising. And then came the crash in 2008. Many people I knew lost everything. So my generation’s experience is a kind of roller coaster of ups and downs and existential dread,” he explains. “The only way to discuss Hungary’s history and its present, especially the last 14 years, is through horror; through the absurd, the horrifying and the terrifying» Attila Veres Writer Stories that draw on gore, folk horror, cosmic nightmares and ‘weird fiction’ are nourished by this same story to announce that in reality nothing terrifies as much as the real life. The day to day life and the terrifying wear and tear of routine. «I am afraid of the mundanity of everyday life. Basically, how it exhausts you. You go to work, you’re useless and then you die: that’s scary,” he says. Then, of course, there are the fears of the job. The cold sweat at the possibility of losing the ‘mojo’ and the panic at the page that is no longer blank, but about to arrive at the bookstore. “I always have nightmares before a book comes out, so I guess what really scares me is publishing books,” he confesses. Metamorphosis’Black Maybe’, peppered with Judas Priest songs, women giving birth in a grave and tourist brochures on trips to the infernal island of Askatoh, brings together ten stories that, Veres points out, are linked by “transcendence and metamorphosis.” “For the search for something more than human, even if that means ceasing to be human,” he adds enigmatically. And he continues: “They are stories with happy endings, because the majority of characters manage to get rid of their humanity.” With his most recent works, however, the Hungarian has wanted to explore other scenarios and reflect on the political anxiety and alarmism that eats away at the society around him. “It has more to do with the current Hungarian reality, with the extent to which people are willing to believe in someone to feel safe and secure,” he explains. His interest, he emphasizes, is none other than analyzing “the ways in which people are brought to situations in which they have to do terrible things to feel safe.” A nice way to summarize a century of dystopian contours and totalitarian ghosts that genres fantastic people are starting to explain better than anyone else. «In Hungary I am not read exclusively by horror fans; In reality, more people read me who want to confront the reality of the country. I myself have discovered that the only way to discuss both Hungary’s history and its present, especially the last fourteen years, is through horror; through the absurd, the horrifying and the terrifying. There is no other way to capture the essence of the experience,” he says.
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