It’s the birthday of British-born ethnically-Hungarian author Tibor Fischer (b. 1959), whose debut novel, Under the Frog (1992), made a Big Huge Literary Splash and was short-listed for the Booker Prize, after the novel had been rejected by 56 publishers who are even now probably still kicking themselves. (Let’s all pause to enjoy imagining that.)

Fischer’s parents were both basketball players back in Hungary; his mother, in fact, was captain of the national team. They defected to England in 1956 during the Revolution, starting out in Manchester but moving to Bromley, Kent, where Fischer was raised. He studied Latin and French at Cambridge and then worked some as a freelance journalist; he has said, “I never could get a proper job.”

Fischer wrote Under the Frog about the 1956 Revolution because he felt most people didn’t know much about it; he used a lot of family connections in Hungary as source material for the novel, and the main character is a member of a basketball team. His second novel, The Thought Gang (1994), is about a failed Cambridge philosopher who joins forces with a one-armed, one-legged thief to become a bank robber, like you do, and his third, The Collector Collector (1997), is told from the point of view of an ancient Sumerian bowl that can communicate with its owners. (I have a coffee cup that occasionally speaks up. Scares the crap out of me every time. Sorry: language.)

Voyage to the End of the Room (2003) is about a wealthy sex-worker-turned-software-mogul who never leaves her apartment. Good to be God (2008) features a man who pretends to the citizens of Miami that he is God and starts his own religion as a money-making scheme. If you haven’t already dropped everything to order one of these incredibly quirky and interesting novels, consider Fischer’s short story collection, Don’t Read This Book If You’re Stupid (2000). His latest collection of stories is Crushed Mexican Spiders (2011).

Fischer is known for hating interview but gives very interesting ones when he does relent.

Go read something crazy and fun on this staid, gray Thursday and stay scrupulously honest to the data.