Reviews

The Illiterate by Ágota Kristóf

staklene_perle's review against another edition

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emotional inspiring reflective fast-paced

4.75

merixien's review against another edition

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fast-paced

4.0

pingu23's review against another edition

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reflective

5.0

kamichel's review against another edition

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emotional slow-paced

4.25

oterapijiiknjigama's review against another edition

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5.0

Htela sam da upoznam Agotu pre nego što pročitam njenu "Blizanačku trilogiju" i za sada mi se mnogo dopada.

nirbas99's review against another edition

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5.0

Me ha encantado. Su historia me recordó algo a mi madre, así que ha sido aún más emotivo.

andy_acid's review

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emotional inspiring reflective sad
I expected the author to delve deeper into how she felt as someone so enamored with reading, yet faced significant hardships while learning a foreign language in a challenging environment. I would have liked to hear more about how she overcame these obstacles and reconnected with her passion for writing.

notoriousesr's review against another edition

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challenging reflective fast-paced

4.0

 Ágota Kristóf left her native Hungary as a young woman, escaping the Soviet dictatorship with her husband and baby as a refugee. In this slim volume, she discusses with characteristic bluntness the difficulties of living and working as a writer in your non-native language.

As an English teacher in a country where English is not a primary language of communication, this book gave me so much to think about; my work is primarily about helping students overcome difficulties they have producing English. Though I don’t speak French or Hungarian, constantly butting up against the limits of your ability in a second language is something I’m intimately familiar with, even as a relatively privileged English-speaker. Kristóf’s frank, unembellished style particularly drives her point home because it made me question how much of her style was a product of her struggles with “the enemy” language (French). This memoir is quite short, but it still wrestles with difficult questions of linguistic assimilation. 4 out of 5 enemy languages. 

naomis_b's review against another edition

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4.0

Read in french

theo_xb83's review against another edition

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4.0

4.5⭐️