about the author

Miklós Radnóti was one of the great Hungarian poets of the twentieth century. He lived in Budapest, where streets have been named after him; statues of Radnóti have been erected throughout the country. The "Postcards" ( or "Razglednicas," as Radnóti titled them, attaching a plural Hungarian ending to the Serbian word for "postcard") comprised Radnóti's last poem, written during a forced march at the end of World War II. This first section was written just outside the labor camp in Yugoslavia where Radnóti had been interned and from which Nazi forces chose to retreat with their prisoners rather than surrender to the approaching Russian army. When Radnóti wrote this first section of the poem in August of 1944, three thousand Jewish prisoners had just begun the march toward Germany. When he wrote the fourth and final of section of the poem in October, roughly twenty prisoners remained alive. Radnóti was shot and thrown into a mass grave along with the others, having prophesied his death precisely in the fourth section of the poem. Over a year later, his widow Fanni Gyarmati insisted that his body be exhumed. This poem--perhaps addressed to her--was found in a book Radnóti had sealed in plastic and placed in his back pocket. Fanni Gyarmati died this year at the age of 102.