István Száva
, 1929 - 1970
István Száva (until 1929, István József Schüller) was born in Budapest, then, part of Austria-Hungary, in a worker’s family. Despite his family’s lack of funds, he was encouraged to study. He enrolled in the humanities program at the Royal Hungarian Pázmány Péter University in Budapest. In 1926, he wrote his first novel Utcasarkok [Street Corners]. In 1927, he joined the Hungarian Social Democratic Party (Magyarországi Szociáldemokrata Pártba). In 1929, he was expelled from the university for leftist activities, and in 1935, he was jailed for promoting social hate. From 1944, he took part in the resistance movement organized by the Magyar Front. In 1945, he was elected as a deputy to the Hungarian National Assembly and, in 1947, to the parliament. That same year, he graduated with a degree in Hungarian, French and German. He led the Népszava [People’s Voice] newspaper from 1945, then became the editor-in-chief of the Kossuth Népe [Kossuth People] (1947–1948) and Szabad Nép [Free People] (1948) as a member of the MDP (Magyar Dolgozók Pártja [Hungarian Working People’s Party]). In 1950, he was arrested under false charges (war crimes, treason, anti-state organization) and sentenced to fifteen years in prison in a trial named after him: the Trial of István Száva and the others. During a retrial in 1956, he was rehabilitated by the Supreme Court. He worked as a teacher, translator (mostly Russian and French), and journalist (editor-in-chief of Hétfői Hírek [Monday News]). He is also known as the author of many novels.
His novelist activity produced mostly biographies of prominent historical figures, often connected to the natural sciences (Archimedes – A szirakuzai óriás [The Giant of Syracuse] published in 1959, Charles Darwin – Tengereken és évmilliókon át [Through the Seas and Millions of Years], 1961, Galileo Galilei – A hiúz a napba néz [The Lynx Looks at the Sun], 1962, Thomas Alva Edison – A Menlo-parki varázsló [The Menlo Park Wizard], 1963, Ignac Semmelweis – Egyedül a halál ellen [Against Death Alone], 1963, Johannes Kepler – Az ég törvénye [The Law of Heaven], 1965, Farkas and Janos Bolyai – Apa és fia [Father and Son], 1967, Pericles – Az istennő kegyeltje [Grace of the Goddess], 1969, Ferenc Rakoczi – A nagyságos fejedelem [The Great Prince], 1971), but also contemporary novels, mainly about the Near and Middle East. His books were translated into various languages, and their popularity continues – about half of his novels were published in recent years as e-books.
Sources:
Digitális História Adatbázis – Száva István available at TortenelmiTar.hu. (accessed: June 17, 2022);
Száva István in Magyar életrajzi lexikon at Arcanum.com (accessed: June 17, 2022);
Wikipedia (accessed: June 17, 2022).
Bio prepared by Marta Pszczolińska, University of Warsaw, m.pszczolinska@al.uw.edu.pl
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