page_title: Ferenc Karinthy
section_title: Epepe (Metropole)
hierarchical_section_title: Ferenc Karinthy / Epepe (Metropole)
caption_attribution_description: Magyar: Karinthy Ferenc író Epepe című kötetének dedikált címlapja 1977 augusztusából
context_page_description: Ferenc Karinthy was a Hungarian novelist, playwright, journalist, editor and translator, as well as a water polo champion. He authored more than a dozen novels. His father was the writer and journalist Frigyes Karinthy. His mother, the psychiatrist Aranka Böhm, was killed in 1944 in Auschwitz.
  Spring Comes to Budapest was the first of Karinthy's novels to be translated into English. His novel Epepe was later translated into English and published by Telegram Books in 2008.
context_section_description: Epepe, written in 1970, is the first of Karinthy's novels to be translated into English, appearing as Metropole in 2008.
  This essentially Kafkaesque tale follows the travails of Budai, a linguist who steps off a plane expecting to be in Helsinki but finds himself in a sprawling and densely populated metropolis whose residents speak an unknown and unintelligible language. Budai is swept along with the crowd to a hotel, where he tries in vain to explain his predicament.
  With no route home apparent, Budai spends his days trying to learn what he can about the city and the language but is frustrated at every turn. The only person with whom he has any kind of relationship is Epepe, who operates the lift in his hotel. But even she can't help when Budai's money runs out and his situation becomes ever more desperate.
caption: Epepe
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