Ági | Füvészkert

“It was too obvious that as a conductor (not a ticket inspector or a band master, those teachers call themselves like this who help to develop and teach mentally able but physically impaired people with the method of Pető M.D.) I would eventually have to come up with a book “about disabilities”. That “shows us the world of disabled people” “talks openly about the problems” and focuses on “that they are people like us”. I’d heard all kinds of pros and cons. Some of them made sense. I really know more about the challenges that people in a wheelchair have to face than the long term average. I have students, a real friend and buddies who… So I knew it more and more surely that I would never want to write something that shows “their world”, as they do not have a separate world. However strange it sounds at first, they live in the very same world as we do. Their problems are embarrassingly the same as yours and mine: they have enough of their teachers, they want their mothers to get involved in their lives a bit less, they are in love with the cool girl but she doesn’t even care, the money is little, the kid throws a tantrum. And how are they the same? Only as anybody is the same in anything. If I’m the same as you, and we are both like Obama, Trump, Usain Bolt, Pope Francis and Aunt Susan on the second floor. So nobody should fall for the trick: the Szabadlábon (at large, with free feet) is not a cute teenage novel more or less about a decent disabled kid who finds his place in society which accommodates him. The novel is a story of growing up and the main character happens to be sitting in a wheelchair, but this situation gave me,  the author a great opportunity to get him cornered in difficult situations on his fictional way. Not being able to stand up without a cane will not make him evidently cool, in fact: he is lying fluently like he was reading it, he avoids responsibility but he is brave and stubborn and curious and he rebels. The “life of disabled people” differs from the average - as do the lives of stamp collectors and truck drivers. But it is more similar to anybody’s life that it differs - really I wanted to tell you about this through the adventures of Dani Győri.”