Esterházy announced last October that he was battling pancreatic cancer. His last book, published earlier this year, was a diary of his struggle with the disease.

The author appeared at the annual Budapest Book Week to promote the work only last month.

Esterházy was born into a centuries-old aristocratic family on April 14, 1950 at the height of Hungary’s Stalinist period.

His grandfather Móric Esterházy was briefly prime minister in 1917. His father Mátyás worked as a translator.

Esterházy obtained a degree in mathematics from Eötvös Loránd University in 1974, but writing was his main occupation by 1978.

He scored his first major success with Termelési-regény (“Production Novel”) in 1979 and began publishing postmodernist novels from the early 1980s.

His best-known work, Celestial Harmonies, published in 2000, treats the long history of his family. Five years later, he republished it as Revised Edition after learning that his father had been an informer for the Communist-era secret police.

Esterházy was awarded the Kossuth Prize in 1996.

Esterházy is survived by his wife and four children. Funeral arrangements are yet to be announced.

Source: Hungary Around the Clock

This news item is one of many published daily by HATC, a premier subscription news service which distributes English-language info about Hungary via email or fax. For a free trial of HATC visit www.hatc.hu and click on 'Free Trial Subscription’.

MTI photo: Balogh Zoltán