Writer, poet and translator. He went to work in the Museum of the Labour Movement in 1967, but in 1968, he was arrested for conspiracy against the state, as a member of a Maoist group, banned from publication, and dismissed from his job. He became a freelance translator. In the 1970s he belonged to the Hungarian democratic opposition. He received a DAAD scholarship from Berlin in 1984-6, enabling him to do research at Bremen University. He lived in Vienna from 1987-95, working for German and Hungarian newspapers and radio stations. Since 1995, he has lived in Berlin, up to 1999 as director of the Hungarian House of Culture (Collegium Hungaricum) in Berlin.