The work of Kertész is embedded in the literary and intellectual history of the twentieth century like no other. At the centre of his works is the holocaust, which he sees as an indelible caesura in human history and which he puts at the heart of European history and modern existence.
The descriptions of his protagonists are informed by the writings of Arthur Rimbaud and Jacques Lacan on split identities and multiple personalities. Rimbaud’s phrase “Je est un autre” was even used by Kertész as the basis for the title of his memoirs “I – Another: chronicle of a metamorphosis” which appeared in 1997.