ABSTRACT
This conclusion presents some closing thoughts on the key concepts discussed in the preceding chapters of this book. The book discusses unforgiving metropolitan environment, which is becoming pesti required the reinvention of the self, to the extent that novels written by assimilated Jews were remarkably similar in many ways to those written by other assimilants who were no friends of the Jews. Interwar representations of the city's physical form were informed by experiences of emigration, feelings of inner exile, irony and, later, a more confrontational stance. The book discusses several novels which return to the private sphere, and to the heart of the Christian middle-class siege mentality. The urge to impose an all-encompassing qualitative judgement on Budapest proved irresistible to many. The desire to make Budapest 'Hungarian', to re-inscribe the national capital with a vision of moral and national order, has survived the period discussed here.
