Queer Budapest is a stunning achievement. By giving voice to a queer past that has been purposefully silenced, Kurimay successfully queers the national and political narrative of Hungary and east central Europe. Queer Budapest should be read widely for a number of reasons: it destabilizes commonly accepted myths and tropes about queer life in east central Europe; it shows how to resurrect queer histories in national contexts where evidence is scant and silences are deafening; it demonstrates that queering national histories is essential if we are to grasp fully their complexity; it illuminates how important a well-researched queer history is to combat contemporary homophobia and transphobia.

At its broadest, Queer Budapest traces the history of non-normative sexualities in Budapest between the birth of the city as a unified metropolis in 1873 and the decriminalization of male homosexual acts in 1961. The author is careful to showcase a range of perspectives, including the authorities (politicians, experts, and police), the general public, and those practicing nonnormative sexualities. The variety of viewpoints is made possible by the impressive range of sources Kurimay deploys: contemporary detective novels, police journals, popular newspapers, writings of sexologists, and court transcripts. These primary sources stand as a testaments to the author's sleuthing skills and also showcase her uncanny ability to mine evidence for subtlety and nuance.

It is impossible to do justice to the craftsmanship of Queer Budapest in this review, so I will limit myself to three takeaways.

First, although Hungary experienced political systems and ideologies that ran the gamut from right-wing authoritarian to left-wing radical, the divergent political regimes built upon each other in their attitudes towards sexuality. Kurimay looks beyond the upheavals resulting from Hungary's rapid political changes and illuminates striking continuities in approaches to regulating and tolerating same-sex sexualities. For instance, the infamous “homosexual registry” remained constant since its inception in late nineteenth century since regulating same-sex sexuality was central to the project of Hungarian modernity—regardless of who was defining said modernity. These contrasting ideologies also shared the view of homosexuality as a “communicable disease.” During the ninety years under examination, Hungarian authorities of various ideological stripes subscribed to the notion that while congenital homosexuals existed, the majority of homosexuals became homosexuals. Given this belief, these regimes imposed a silence on homosexuality so as to limit “the spread” of homosexuality. Kurimay is careful to point out that while both liberal and conservative political regimes tolerated certain queer sexualities prior to WWII, they did not do so in the same ways or for the same reasons. Ultimately, the dividing line in the treatment of non-normative sexualities had less to do with ideology and more to do with chronology. The death knell for the uneasy but dynamic co-existence between the Hungarian state and queer sexualities came at the hands of the communist one-party state.

Second, as Kurimay adeptly resurrects queer Budapest in word, image, and deed, she also reveals just how interconnected Hungary's capital was to other European metropolises in terms of legal, police, sexological, and activist discourses on sexuality. Given how central attitudes toward and treatment of homosexuality were to modernity, it was important that Hungary display a grasp of this dimension of modern urban life. Kurimay demonstrates that Hungarian experts were often on the cutting edge of debates on sexology, psychology, and criminology and thus confirms the centrality of east central Europe within broader continental developments.

Finally, Queer Budapest illustrates the corrosive and long-term costs of silencing queer voices. Between 1948 and 1989 the communist regime used homosexuality as a way to blackmail its own citizens into becoming informants. In an ironic twist, both homosexual informants and their Communist Party minders became heavily invested in keeping homosexuality a “state secret.” The Communist Party did incalculable damage to not only the informants’ psyche but also community identity since it “overrode the memory and experience of both the interwar and pre-1918 period that accommodated a visible queer sexual culture” (233). The consequences of this repression are very much on display today. Hungary's conservative government insists that a Hungarian gay movement or even queer culture did not exist prior to 1989. Kurimay's book is a crucial step in refuting these ahistorical fallacies and providing queer communities in Hungary and beyond with evidence to prove that sexual minorities are integral to the texture and fabric of their national histories.