He was born on 9 November 1929 in Budapest, Hungary. At the age of 14 he was deported with other Hungarian Jew during World War II to the Auschwitz concentration camp, and was later sent to Buchenwald.

Kertész' best-known work, Fatelessness (Sorstalanság), describes the experience of fifteen-year-old György (George) Köves in the concentration camps of Auschwitz, Buchenwald and Zeitz. Some have interpreted the book as quasi-autobiographical, but the author disavows a strong biographical connection. His writings translated into English include Kaddish for a Child Not Born (Kaddis a meg nem született gyermekért) and Liquidation (Felszámolás). Kertész initially found little appreciation for his writing in Hungary and moved to Germany. Kertész started translating German works into Hungarian - such as The Birth of Tragedy by Nietzsche, the plays of Dürrenmatt, Schnitzler and Tankred Dorst, the thoughts of Wittgenstein - and did not publish another novel until the late 1980s. He continues to write in Hungarian and submits his works to publishers in Hungary.

A film based on his novel Fatelessness was made in Hungary in 2005 for which he wrote the script. Although sharing the same title, the movie is more autobiographical than the book. The film was released at various dates throughout the world in 2005 and 2006.

Kertész and his wife currently reside in Berlin.

Vasvári, Louise O., and Tötösy de Zepetnek, Steven, eds. Imre Kertész and Holocaust Literature. West Lafayette: Purdue UP, 2005.[1]Vasvári, Louise O., and Tötösy de Zepetnek, Steven, eds. Comparative Central European Holocaust Studies. West Lafayette: Purdue UP, 2009.[2]Molnár, Sára. "Nobel in Literature 2002 Imre Kertész's Aesthetics of the Holocaust," CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture 5.1 (2003)[3]Tötösy de Zepetnek, Steven. "And the 2002 Nobel Prize for Literature Goes to Imre Kertész, Jew and Hungarian," CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture 5.1 (2003)[4]Tötösy de Zepetnek, Steven. "Imre Kertész's Nobel Prize, Public Discourse, and the Media," CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture 7.4 (2005)[5]