Oculus Presents: The story of my favorite Hungarian horror cover

Hey, everyone, this is Oculus Reviews. It's uh. Been a while, hasn't it.

IRL stuff has kind of eaten up my time and energies in the past year or so, hence me heinously neglecting this blog, but honestly, the more time goes on, the more I miss being able to talk in-depth about genre fiction that I love. I have found some true underrated gems in the year that has passed since my last post on this blog, as well as some true duds - stuff that has embroidered itself into my brain for whatever reason, but also stuff that relatively few people have heard about in the grand scheme of things. I mean, I probably won't surprise anyone by saying that Frank Herbert's Dune books are masterpieces, but how many of you folks have heard about his novel The Green Brain?

Bottom line: we're back with a vengeance, baby. And to kick off things, let me present my favorite Hungarian edition of the one and only Dracula by Bram Stoker:

I still recall the surprised euphoria I'd felt years and years ago (I don't think I was older than 14) when I found this book in my favorite used bookshop, although back then I was too excited to read it to really stop and savor this fantastic cover art. I really dig the sharp, surprising color scheme as well as the ghastly imagery that evokes old tapestries or perhaps woodcut art; the ship episode is by far my favorite and most remembered of the book, so I'm extra into the fact that the cover artist chose that particular bit to illustrate.

At first glance, the book doesn't name the person who drew this - even with some dedicated Google-fu, all I could dig up is that my copy is a 1989 edition by the publishing house/literary society Jókai Irodalmi Egyesület, and is the reprint of a 1925 Hungarian edition translated by Ferencz Tar. (Amazingly enough, the 1925 one was the fourth Hungarian edition of this book - looks like the readers really ate up this one.) Some more research, however, finally netted me the cover artist's name: this same cover art, only in green instead of red, adorned the cover of the 1925 edition, and was drawn by acclaimed Hungarian artist Tibor Gönczi-Gebhardt. Not sure who in particular is interested in this bit of Hungarian literary history, but I find it really neat to have discovered a bit of lore behind one of my favorite covers ever made for a horror novel. As for whether the contents of the book hold up to my fond memories - only a reread will answer me that question, am I right?