Fateless

novel by Kertész

Also known as: “Fatelessness”, “Sorstalanság”

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July 16, 2026

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Fatelessness, also known as Sorstalanság, is a semi-autobiographical novel by Hungarian author Imre Kertész. The novel, completed in the mid-1960s but published in 1975, features an adolescent narrator who is deported to a concentration camp during World War II.1

The narrator confronts the horrors of the Holocaust with a detached complacency, focusing on survival rather than outrage or retribution. Kertész, who himself was a Holocaust survivor, explores themes of human degradation and the will to live through this narrative. The novel was the first in a trilogy reflecting on the Holocaust and gained wider recognition after its German translation in 1990, contributing to Kertész's Nobel Prize in Literature in 2002.1

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Imre Kertész
…most-acclaimed novel, Sorstalanság (Fatelessness, or Fateless), which he completed in the mid-1960s but was unable to publish for nearly a decade. When the novel finally appeared in 1975, it received little critical attention but established Kertész as a unique and provocative voice in the dissident subculture within contemporary Hungarian literature.…
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…most-acclaimed novel, Sorstalanság (Fatelessness, or Fateless), which he completed in the mid-1960s but was unable to publish for nearly a decade. When the novel finally appeared in 1975, it received little critical attention but established Kertész as a unique and provocative voice in the dissident subculture within contemporary Hungarian literature.…
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Hungarian literature
Nobel Prize winners
…his first novel, Sorstalanság (Fatelessness, or Fateless), which he completed in the mid-1960s but was unable to publish for nearly a decade. When the novel finally appeared in 1975, it received little critical attention but established Kertész as a unique and provocative voice in the dissident subculture within contemporary…
Read More
…his first novel, Sorstalanság (Fatelessness, or Fateless), which he completed in the mid-1960s but was unable to publish for nearly a decade. When the novel finally appeared in 1975, it received little critical attention but established Kertész as a unique and provocative voice in the dissident subculture within contemporary…
Read More