Satantango

A world-famous novel by a European classic — the Nobel Prize laureate in Literature 2025 and the winner of the International Booker Prize. “Satanic Tango,” written in 1985, is built like a tango: the plot moves by “steps”—step by step it leads the characters forward, and then brings them back to the starting point.

The story unfolds in socialist Hungary, in a poor rural cooperative that’s in decline. Its residents — ruined peasants — spend their days drinking, gossiping, and fantasizing about escaping to another life. But the familiar order is shattered by news: a man long believed dead has returned to the settlement. The charismatic and energetic “returnee” promises everyone an imminent renewal and well-being, and in people a spark of hope flares up — almost a messianic expectation of salvation.

This is a dark and precise parable in the Kafkaesque–Beckettian spirit, filmed by Béla Tarr. The film won a prize at the Berlin Film Festival and the Belgian honorary award “Golden Century.” © Sereda, translation into Russian, 2018; © Bondarenko, art design and layout, 2026; “AST Publishing House,” 2026; CORPUS ®.