“Anita Kurimay’s book is important not only as an amazing critical history of a rich array of sources on same-sex sexuality in Hungary from the late nineteenth century to the decriminalization of homosexuality in 1961, but also as a challenging response to widespread beliefs that often form the basis for attacks against the LGBT+ community in Hungary.”
 

Hungarian Cultural Studies

“With its rich readings of cultural, medical, and police records, Queer Budapest makes a major contribution to our understanding of modern queer European history. Kurimay’s vivid exploration of how political regimes of twentieth-century Hungary conceived of the queer in their midst illuminates the tangled relationship between politics and sexuality.”

Dan Healey, University of Oxford

“Filled with riveting subplots—from rural servants’ interpretations of aristocratic lesbianism to the brutal eugenic fantasies of Arrow Cross fascism—Kurimay’s book traces the paradoxical twists and turns in Hungarian authorities’ handling of homosexuality. Queer Budapest felicitously and brilliantly scrambles all our usual assumptions about the relationships between sexual and other kinds of politics.”

Dagmar Herzog, author of Cold War Freud: Psychoanalysis in an Age of Catastrophes