'Péter Zilahy is just the vagabond polymath the New Europe needs. Don't wait. Climb aboard the rollercoaster today. Read The Last Window Giraffe as an elaborate, erudite, gut-wrenching belly-laugh at everything that went wrong and all the people who failed to fix it.'
Lawrence Norfolk
'Péter Zilahy is the white raven of Hungarian literature... the freshness of his experience comes through in the text; it's as if he'd been there at every milestone, as if the book were written by a journalist with the pen of a poet.'
Péter Esterházy
'It’s blooming brilliant, brothers, and I am not chanting colourful cant here.'
Ian McMillan
'A breathtaking book about incredible countries and extraordinary times'
Andrzej Stasiuk
'I have not read anything so original in fifteen years. Zilahy feels and understands his age. He has a good sense of humour, and his own inimitable style. He is writing a story, and in the meantime, he is happening himself. Péter Zilahy's pictorial novel is a welcome novelty, and I would even venture to say the literary event of the year.'
Mihály Kornis
'Zilahy captures the poetry of resistance with the confidence of a sleepwalker'
Ingo Schulze
'Wonderful!'
Victor Pelevin
'Péter Zilahy is the Hungarian Andy Warhol. Even his sales pitch is a work of art'
Arnon Grunberg
'Zilahy respects neither god nor man, a state of affairs, which, for all practical purposes means that he can observe the world each time as if for the first time. What's more, he writes down only what he sees, what his eyes believe, and yet the whole thing ends up profoundly serious.'
Gábor Németh
'An elementary mix of reportage, documentary poetry and intimate inner-archeology...Péter Zilahy, wanderer, adventurer, initiator of a great many performances and provocations, much resembles Jean-Arthur Rimbaud during the Commun of Paris. Though I haven’t got a clue what Jean-Arthur really looked like, I have a strong feeling that he looked like Péter Zilahy.'
Jurij Andrukhovich
'As the 20th century drew to a close, we thought that travel literature had become a thing of the past, the early 18th and 19th century writings of the British adventurers no longer of interest, while the genre itself has sunk to the level of Robert Kaplan. Then, out of the blue, a Window Giraffe, and you were forced to realize for the hundredth time that the problem was not with the genre, but those who had engaged in it. Péter Zilahy's lyrical associations, the personal authenticity of the descriptions, the careful avoidance of stereotype cynicism, resulted not only in a very special book, but saved a literary genre from banality, and brought it back from a state of suspended animation.'
Péter Krasztev
'Not only a great piece of literature but a visual feast as well'
BBC, Julian Evans
'The book is clever, realistic, wonderfully humorous and very current. Zilahy has taken photographs, interviews, film and music fragments, and rolled them all together into a burlesque and poetic handbook for protesters. Zilahy's revolutionary book was written with an acrobatical skill that will take your breath away.'
ARTE, Otto Wynen
'In these bittersweet pages you will find the fall of the regimes, and the last twenty years of Eastern Europe.'
Rolling Stone Magazine, Enrico Remmert
'We learn from Zilahy's book that, in the middle of Europe, there are actually people who can change the world without bloodshed.'
Radio Tre, Bruno Ventavoli
'The Last Window Giraffe is a remarkable book – in every respect.'
Die Welt, Michael Pilz
'In the same way that Catch 22 is about the madness of war, The Last Window Giraffe is about the madness of everyday life in a dictatorship.' Orient Express, Frank Prescott
'Zilahy’s book is a great hymn to a peaceful revolution.'
Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Tilman Spreckelsen
'Péter Zilahy is a multitalented genius of the new media. He confidently handles an enormous pool of information, and he is a glamorous performer on stage.'
Die Zeit, Karl-Markus Gauss
'In this book, every reader can read his own story. You can’t ask for anything better in a work of literature.'
Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung, Volker Weidermann
'The voice evokes a grasping Pynchon in its inclusiveness, inventiveness and enthusiasm.'
Context Magazine, Andrew Singer
'Péter Zilahy's book, written in the form of a communist children's encyclopedia, ranks among the most innovative stylistic works of 20th-century prose, along with Queneau, Calvino, Amis and Perec.'
NRC Handelsblad, Pieter Steinz
'All-round 21st century Renaissance man. Peter Zilahy is the face of New Europe.'
Ottawa Citizen, Paul Gessel
'Poet, performer and photographer, Zilahy has written a book as colourful as the cube of his famous fellow countryman, Rubik.'
Il Foglio
'This book is an international cult. Its success is based on a simple and poetic idea. The alphabet contains our whole world. Those who can put the letters together in the right way can have Love, Freedom, and…'
Glamour Magazine
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