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The Hungarian poet, novelist and former dissident Gyorgy Faludy has died in Budapest at the age of 96, his family announced on Saturday.
The writer, considered a living legend in Hungary, died at his home on Friday night, his wife told the MTI national press agency.
Faludy, best known outside his native country as the author of the autobiographical novel "My Happy Days in Hell", was imprisoned for three years in 1950 by the communist regime.
He will be buried on September 9 in Budapest, said his widow, Fanny Faludy Kovacs, who was just 28 when the pair married three years ago.
Faludy underwent an operation for a broken leg three weeks ago and had been in a coma for the last few days.
He was born into a Jewish family in Budapest on September 22 1910, and left Hungary in 1938 for Paris to escape the rise of fascism there.
When the Nazis occupied France he again escaped, this time for Morocco, and from there he boarded a ship to the United States.
He returned to Hungary after World War II but left after the failed revolution in 1956, spending two decades in Canada.
He only returned in 1989 following the fall of communism, when his work was officially published in his homeland for the first time -- before then it had only been available illegally.
He was famous for his translations of the works of the French poet Francois Villon and for his own poetry, some of which has been translated into English.
He published the sequel to "My Happy Days in Hell" in 2000, and had been due to publish a third volume of memoirs at the end of this month.
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AFP 021138 GMT 09 06
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