Staff Pick
The Door is an astonishing novel. It left me speechless, reeling, heart between my teeth. Szabo's characters are so real, so lived in, so particular and surprising in the way that everyone is particular and surprising, if only we had the time and the perceptive capacities to see each other clearly, wholly, without judgement or fear. Her story is truly unlike anything I've read. If I were the kind of person to throw around words like "genius" or "masterpiece," this would be the appropriate time. Recommended By Darla M., Powells.com
Synopses & Reviews
Magda Szabó (1917–2007) was born into an old Protestant family in Debrecen, Hungary’s “Calvinist Rome,” in the midst of the great Hungarian plain. Szabó, whose father taught her to converse with him in Latin, German, English, and French, attended the University of Debrecen, studying Latin and Hungarian, and went on to work as a teacher throughout the German and Soviet occupations of Hungary in 1944 and 1945. In 1947, she published two volumes of poetry,
Bárány (The Lamb), and
Vissza az emberig (Return to Man), for which she received the Baumgartner Prize in 1949. Under Communist rule, this early critical success became a liability, and Szabó turned to writing fiction: her first novel,
Freskó (Fresco), came out in 1958, followed closely by
Az oz (The Fawn). In 1959 she won the József Attila Prize, after which she went on to write many more novels, among them
Katalin utca (Katalin Street, 1969),
Ókút (The Ancient Well, 1970),
Régimódi történet (An Old-Fashioned Tale, 1971), and
Az ajtó (The Door, 1987). Szabó also wrote verse for children, plays, short stories, and nonfiction, including a tribute to her husband, Tibor Szobotka, a writer and translator of Tolkien and Galsworthy who died in 1982. A member of the European Academy of Sciences and a warden of the Calvinist Theological Seminary in Debrecen, Magda Szabó died in the town in which she was born, a book in her hand. In 2017 NYRB Classics will publish
Iza’s Ballad (1963).
Len Rix is a poet, critic, and former literature professor who has translated five books by Antal Szerb, including the novel Journey by Moonlight (available as an NYRB Classic) and, most recently, the travel memoir The Third Tower. In 2006 he was awarded the Oxford-Weidenfeld Translation Prize for his translation of The Door.
Ali Smith was born in Inverness, Scotland, in 1962 and lives in Cambridge. Her latest novel is How to Be Both.
Synopsis
One of The New York Times Book Review's "10 Best Books of 2015"
An NYRB Classics Original
The Door is an unsettling exploration of the relationship between two very different women. Magda is a writer, educated, married to an academic, public-spirited, with an on-again-off-again relationship to Hungary s Communist authorities. Emerence is a peasant, illiterate, impassive, abrupt, seemingly ageless. She lives alone in a house that no one else may enter, not even her closest relatives. She is Magda s housekeeper and she has taken control over Magda s household, becoming indispensable to her. And Emerence, in her way, has come to depend on Magda. They share a kind of love at least until Magda s long-sought success as a writer leads to a devastating revelation.
Len Rix s prizewinning translation of The Door at last makes it possible for American readers to appreciate the masterwork of a major modern European writer."
Synopsis
Magda Szabó (1917–2007) is considered one of Hungary’s greatest female novelists. Her novels, dramas, essays, and poetry have been published in forty-two countries, and in 2003 she was awarded the Prix Femina Étranger for
The Door.
Len Rix is a translator of Hungarian literature, best known for his translations of Antal Szerb’s Journey by Moonlight and Magda Szabó’s The Door, both of which will be published as NYRB Classics in the fall of 2014. He lives in the United Kingdom.
Ali Smith was born in Inverness in Scotland and lives in Cambridge, UK. Her latest novel is How to be Both.
Synopsis
An NYRB Classics Original
Winner of the Oxford-Weidenfeld Translation Prize and the Prix Femina Étranger
The Door is an unsettling exploration of the relationship between two very different women. Magda is a writer, educated, married to an academic, public-spirited, with an on-again-off-again relationship to Hungary’s Communist authorities. Emerence is a peasant, illiterate, impassive, abrupt, seemingly ageless. She lives alone in a house that no one else may enter, not even her closest relatives. She is Magda’s housekeeper and she has taken control over Magda’s household, becoming indispensable to her. And Emerence, in her way, has come to depend on Magda. They share a kind of love—at least until Magda’s long-sought success as a writer leads to a devastating revelation.
Len Rix’s prizewinning translation of The Door at last makes it possible for American readers to appreciate the masterwork of a major modern European writer.