Acta Universitatis Sapientiae, Philologica, 3, 1 (2011) 95-102 95 The Space Concepts as Intercultural Experience in Contemporary Hungarian Prose Éva BÁNYAI University of Bucharest Department of Hungarology banyaieva@gordias.ro Abstract. In recent years a number of contemporary Hungarian prose writings have appeared in which the visualization of the interlinguistic and intercultural experience plays a highly significant role. In the prose writings which come into existence in the intercultural border-space, a heterogeneity of the cultural space unfolds. The estrangement from the narratives of self-culture and the recurrence to these give way to another culture. This phenomenon can be analysed in the short story volume by Gábor Vida, Not free and not royal [Nem szabad és nem királyi]. Keywords: Hungarian literature, alterity/alienage, space concepts, Gábor Vida In recent years a number of contemporary Hungarian prose works of art (novels, short stories, collections of narratives, etc.) have appeared in which the visualization of interlinguistic and intercultural experience acquires a highly significant role, occasionally a thematized, reflective one. Because of the prose- poetical use and actuation of different linguistic, cultural and religious registers, the matter of alterity/alienage becomes determinative and determinable. The cultural and geopoetical definiteness of these registers denotes the existence of a geopoetical notion of space which is a relatively restricted but removable space structure because of the relativity of the borders. In the prose writings which were born in the intercultural border-space and which use intercultural experiences, the heterogeneity of the cultural space unfolds, hence the estrangement from the