Economics of Survival

In this paper, I aim to analyse Imre Kertész’s Fatelessness from the perspective of its economic systems. In Kertész’s work they form a discursive network that permeates the entire novel (Szirák 2022). It is also important to see that the circulation of symbolic and material values also plays a key role in the demarcation of the boundaries between the concentration camps and the world outside. However, in the novel’s memorable yet perplexing conclusion, this distinction turns into a speech about the relative purity and simplicity of life in the camp. In an attempt to answer the questions arising from this statement by György Köves, I will argue that understanding of the economic models and the differences between them in the worlds of the inside and the outside is essential to the interpretation of Fatelessness.