Steven Brust is an excellent American writer, who uses Hungarian as the exotic, alien language and culture of the Easterners in his fantasy series. Yet only one of his novels has been translated into Hungarian. In this brief review I shall attempt to show why his works are ignored in Hungary despite the author’s Hungarian origin, and to point out the advantage of the translator’s invisibility in such cases. I also hope that it will prove the importance of translation criticism. Judging from this translation, the translator - whose command of English language seems rather superficial, and his Hungarian cannot be considered irreproachable, either - took on a job but did not assume the responsibility involved. He has modified all layers of the novel which results in a heavy loss in tone, the sense of wonder becomes so reduced that the tenor of the whole book is perverted. What he has done goes beyond the usual normalisation, simplification, levelling-out and explicitation processes so characteristic of genuine translations. Hungarian sf & fantasy publishers are now unwilling to publish any book by Brust. That one translation has brought his novels into disrepute, his future in Hungarian has been ruined completely.