Ilona Varga (b. 1983, Pécs) is a Hungarian historian and novelist. She studied modern European history at Eötvös Loránd University and completed an MA at Central European University, focusing on the late Habsburg period and the origins of total war. After working as a translator and archival researcher at the Haus-, Hof- und Staatsarchiv in Vienna, she turned to fiction, publishing essays and short stories in Central European literary journals before her debut novel in 2015. Varga lives between Vienna and Budapest, speaks Hungarian, German, and Serbo-Croatian, and is known for richly researched narratives that explore borderlands, espionage, and the fragile machinery of diplomacy in the early twentieth century. She collects vintage postcards and rides the Danube cycle path when not digging through microfilm reels.
