**Fateless** or **Fatelessness** (Hungarian: *Sorstalanság*, lit. 'Fatelessness') is a novel by Imre Kertész, winner of the 2002 Nobel Prize for literature, written between 1960 and 1973 and first published in 1975. The novel is a semi-autobiographical story about a 14-year-old Hungarian Jew's experiences in the Auschwitz and Buchenwald concentration camps. The book is the first part of a trilogy, which continues in A kudarc ("Fiasco" ISBN 0-8101-1161-6) and *Kaddis a meg nem született gyermekért* ("Kaddish for an Unborn Child" ISBN 1-4000-7862-8). Kertész won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2002, "for writing that upholds the fragile experience of the individual against the barbaric arbitrariness of history". (Source: [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fatelessness))
Adaptations (1)
Fatelessness was adapted into a 2005 film.
Fateless2005 · film · 140 min · dir. Lajos Koltai · IMDb ↗A Hungarian youth comes of age at Buchenwald during World War II. György Köves is 14, the son of a merchant who's sent to a forced labor camp. After his father's departure, György gets a job at a brickyard; his bus is stopped and its Jewish occupants sent to camps. There, György find camaraderie, suffering, cruelty, illness, and death. He hears advice on preserving one's dignity and self-esteem. He discovers hatred. If he does survive and returns to Budapest, what will he find? What is natural; what is it to be a Jew? Sepia, black and white, and color alternate to shade the mood.
