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Böszörményi Zoltán.info

The Multimillionaire from Arad

by Zsuzsanna Sándor
168ora
 

He started out studying ballet in Transylvania, he arrived in Canada with $25 in his pocket, and presently he’s a multimillionaire business man living in Monaco. After the Eastern-European regime changes he went on to increase his wealth in Romania. A few years ago he decided to become the patron of Hungarian literature. And in the meantime he also wrote his first novel.

I expected a multimillionaire from Monaco to walk around in a tuxedo, chomping on a cigar, I tease my host.

Zoltán Böszörményi is wearing a sweater and a smile in his Budapest apartment. The cigar though is not too far off the mark: he is the founder of the Monaco Cigar Club. It now counts the local aristocracy and political elite among its members. But otherwise Böszörményi, the businessman from Transylvania, eschews useless luxuries. He stays away from lavish affairs. He doesn’t own a Rolls-Royce; a dream car wouldn’t look right in the Budapest…

The subject of this interview has several residences. He spends most of his time in  his Monaco apartment whose previous tenants included Claudia Schiffer. Böszörményi often shows off the bathroom where the top model used to soak her much-treasured, multi-million-dollar body. He also has an apartment in Bucharest, but he turned over his Canadian apartment to his daughter. His Alpine ski lodge is for sale. He has given up the sport since an accident.

He built a Hungarian cultural center in Arad which also serves as the editorial offices of  Irodalmi Jelen, a literary publication he founded and still finances. And he is a writer himself. After several volumes of poetry there is a novel now available from his pen: “Far from Nothing”. It tells about the ups and downs in the life of a sales manager.

“The book had been fermenting in me for a long time before I actually sat down to write it. I had a hard time reconciling the businessman and the creative writer within me. Two years ago I sold my business, the factories, and since then I’ve been living for literature. The actual writing of the manuscript took hardly any time at all. For me writing is a return to my beginnings.”

Böszörményi could have had his novel published by his own firm, at his own expense, but he preferred to find an independent publisher in Hungary. He wanted to be judged by the same standards as any other writer. He avoids those who fawn on him for his wealth or enviously badmouth his work. He likes to go for high stakes, whether in business or literature. He is fully aware of the risks, but now he’s fully invested in literature.