KÖRMENDI, FERENC

KÖRMENDI, FERENC (1900–1972), Hungarian novelist. Born and educated in Budapest, Körmendi became a journalist and music critic. In 1932 he rose to sudden fame with the publication of Budapesti kaland, a novel that won an international publishers' competition and was translated into many languages (Escape to Life, 1933). The books that followed reflect the situation of bourgeois Budapest between the world wars, and of the doubts and sense of isolation of Hungarian Jewish intellectuals. These popular novels included Ind. 715 Via Bodenbach (1932; Via Bodenbach, 1935); A boldog emberöltő (1934; The Happy Generation, 1945); Bűnösök (1935; The Sinners, 1948), and Találkozás és búcsú ("To Meet and Say Goodbye," 1937). In 1938 Körmendi fled to London, where he joined the Hungarian section of the BBC. Except for a few years in South America, he continued to live in England. His principal work of Jewish interest is the novel Júniusi hétköznap (1943; Weekday in June, 1946). Based on fact, this tells the tragic story of an assimilated Hungarian Jew who, on the eve of emigration, is killed when a local Nazi throws a bomb in front of a synagogue. -BIBLIOGRAPHY: Magyar Irodalmi Lexikon, 1 (1963); M. Szabolcsi, A magyar irodalom története (1919–töl napjainkig), 6 (1966), 185–6. (Baruch Yaron)