Books
Bed Table Door
“Between USSR’s squashing of this small country’s brief revolution in 1956 and the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, Hungary was a Communist-lite state: on the one hand it bore all the hallmarks of the Soviet tradition (it had a secret police, the state controlled of the economy, and it imprisoned non- conformists) while on the other, flourishing out of sight, it had a counter culture of sorts. Bed Table Door takes us into that hidden and intriguing resistance world and introduces us to a band of young recalcitrants who won’t cut their hair, love jazz, dodge conscription, and dream of escape to the west (and now and again one or two even manage that). The story told is melancholy (how could it be anything else given the political circumstances?) while the style in which it is told is clean and smooth and fluent (think Andre Kurkov’s Death and the Penguin). But do not think this is a merely a novel about a historical phenomenon that has passed (the days when the Communists ran Hungary); yes, it is about the recent past that will not come back but it also about something that is out of time, the human spirit’s indefatigability, hopefulness, resilience and capacity for refusal, and those values are very much values we need to celebrate and cultivate in the dire political present.” – Carlo Gébler
Enemy Alien:
Walter's Journey Through Adversity
Walter is a young Jewish boy, growing up in a camp for enemy aliens in Kazakhstan, where winters are harsh, and the summers are hot. His parents are from Austria, but he was born in Tallinn, Estonia. For Walter, the camp is the only home he has known for six years, while the second world war is raging in Europe. He makes friendships with the soldiers who guard them and nurtures eagle fledglings. When the war is over, he and his family embark on a three-thousand-mile journey through war-torn Europe, in search of the rest of their family and a new "home".
Angel Fur
These two dozen short stories range from Communist-era Budapest to the US Grand Canyon by way of passionate affairs in Central European apartments and a faded Hungarian film star trying to save children from being shot during the Arrow Cross Holocaust of 1944-5. Other tales cover a wide spectrum of subjects including the odd consequences of mental illness, some magical realist episodes, a good deal of bizarre comedy, and (more recently) events in rural Ireland. The Irish author and critic Carlo Gebler has described Toldy's work as reaching parts of the psyche other writers do not touch.
Red Roots - Orange sky
My first poetry collection published by Lapwing Belfast is autobiographical, telling the story of my first 18 years in Hungary in Red Roots - and reflecting on my present life in Northern Ireland in Orange Sky.
The Emigrant Woman's Tale
A collection of memoir, short fiction, poetry and song lyrics
by Csilla Toldy and Fil Campbell
40 pages and 10 truck CD with songs, poems and spoken word with music published in 2015
"If a soul seeking - prior to its fall into the manifestation of life - an efficient way in which to develop and grow through adversity, oppression and insecurity, then Ms Toldy is certainly a mistress of such a design.
This pilgrimage of a journey has been beautifully and poignantly expressed through her writings and poetry; none more so than in her in her latest book The Emigrant Woman’s Tale.
It would be a mistake to venture or even attempt any critique on this work, other than to say, read it with an open heart, and know yourself better!"
Keith ap Owen
Vertical Montage
A sequence of poems related to films and film making - dedicated to Sergei Eisenstein
Many of these poems became film poems viewable here
Lapwing Publications 2018
