About the Grand Novel Budapest

A city is not built by bricks, but by the stories of its inhabitants. Budapest belongs to all of us, our personal experiences make it the way we see and love it.
The Grand Novel Budapest is our story.

A city is not built by bricks, but by the stories of its inhabitants. Budapest belongs to all of us, our personal experiences make it the way we see and love it. The Grand Novel Budapest is our story.

The Grand Novel Budapest will be released as a 23-chapter book in November 2023 as a result of a community creation. The large-scale literary piece will be published for the 150th anniversary of the unification of Pest, Buda and Óbuda. The joint creative process of 23 contemporary Hungarian writers and the city’s 23 districts began last November however, the one-and-a-half-year program goes beyond the scope of the volume. Its aim is to collect, narrate and present the past 150 years of the capital through stories and district legends, involving the city’s inhabitants, using literature as a medium for nurturing dialogue among them.

The publication of the book is preceded by events promoting story-sharing and reading. In May 2024 the chapters of the book will come to life during the Budapest Spring Festival in the form of performative adaptations.

The Grand Novel Budapest contributes to Ulysses: European Odyssey programme, supported by the Creative Europe Fund. This cultural project spanning for two years and covering 18 cities puts James Joyce’s Ulysses, published 100 years ago, into a contemporary context.

Direct and indirect Hungarian references can be traced in genesis of Joyce’s epic novel and also during reading it. The novel Ulysses inspires a (re)discovery of Budapest, the creation of the Grand Novel. In the footsteps of heroes of both Odyssey and Ulysses, we invite ordinary people of the local communities of all 23 Budapest districts to roam their city, to voice its phenomena.