Gergely Balazs

Gergely Balazs, also known as "Bölcsek" ("the wise man"), a writer deeply loved by his fellow countrymen, not just for his literary production but even because he played several times, as goalkeeper, in the Hungarian national water-polo team during the eighties. His novels are characterized by a very personal prose with which he describes the day-to-day issues of his nation, and particularly those contradictions arising from the not easy transition between what Lajos Grendel once called the "unreal socialism" and, by the definition of the novelist, the "moral asymmetries" of the globalized neo-capitalism. His most popular novel, "The Barber in the Tower," inspired the screenplay of "East," the Wim Wenders' masterpiece with Philip Seymour Hoffman acting as the Barber and AnnaLynne McCord as the psychologist. Today he holds the Literature Chair at the prestigious Bratislava (Pozsony) University but, in the spare time, he trains with some success the water polo team of his university.