Hungarian Novelist and and the winner of the 2002 Nobel Prize in Literature, Imre Kertesz has died after suffering from Parkinson’s disease for several years.

He was born on November 9, 1929, Budapest, Hungary and was 14 when he was deported to the Auschwitz concentration camp in German-occupied Poland in June 1944.

Hungarian President Janos Ader said Kertesz’s life was a “gift” to all those who loved, knew, read and understood him.

“Like no one else, he saw so sharply and made others see so exactly the nature of dictatorships, ‘the age of irrationality,'” Ader said in a letter to the writer’s family. “He knew that the lack of external freedom can be endured only with the freedom of spirit.

“He taught us that we should not forget anything about our past because it all belongs to our common fate, our common fatelessness,” Ader said.

Imre Kertesz was a controversial figure within Hungary, especially since being Hungary’s first and only Nobel Laureate in Literature. His notable works are Fatelessness, Kaddish for an Unborn Child and Liquidation.