Fatelessness
1975 semi-autobiographical novel by Imre Kertész
Fateless or Fatelessness (Hungarian: Sorstalanság, lit. 'Fatelessness') is the first novel by Imre Kertész, winner of the 2002 Nobel Prize for literature. He began writing it in the 1960 but it was rejected for publication by the Communist regime in Hungary. It was finally published in 1975.
The novel is considered a quasi-autobiographical story about a 14-year-old Hungarian Jew's experiences in the Auschwitz and Buchenwald concentration camps, as Kertesz was sent to Auschwitz at this age, after the Nazi's entered Budapest in March 1944.
The book is the first part of a trilogy, which continues the story of György Köves, as he grows older. In A kudarc ("Fiasco" ISBN 0-8101-1161-6) he has survived the camps and tries to deal with post-war Hungary; in Kaddis a meg nem született gyermekért ("Kaddish for an Unborn Child" ISBN 1-4000-7862-8) he explains how it is that he cannot bring himself to bring a child into a world capable of such atrocities.
Kertész won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2002, "for writing that upholds the fragile experience of the individual against the barbaric arbitrariness of history", and how one deals with his survivor after knowing so many who died. one can handle surviving when so many other people died. This literary concept is called “witness literature”, describing trauma from personal experience.
The book was first translated into English by Christopher C. Wilson and Katharina M. Wilson in 1992 as Fateless (ISBN 0-8101-1049-0 and ISBN 0-8101-1024-5), while in 2004 a second translation by Tim Wilkinson appeared (ISBN 1-4000-7863-6) under the title Fatelessness.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Fatelessness” as 1975 semi-autobiographical novel by Imre Kertész. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the arts & letters register because the source frames it as 1975 semi-autobiographical novel by Imre Kertész. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Attribution, date and provenance are strongest when supported by the original work, a catalogue record and documented transmission. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 24, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q655701. VIAF identifies the subject as 178082898. The Library of Congress control number is no2007016450. 1 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2002, 1960, 1975 and 1944.
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This entry incorporates text from “Fatelessness” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.