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Reading lists

7 lesser-known Vintage Classics by women

Iza's Ballad

A profoundly moving novel with the unforgettable power of Szabó’s award-winning The Door.

[A] heartbreakingly beautiful novel… George Szirtes conveys both the sophistication and simplicity of Szabó’s narrative in a superb translation… Humble, wistful Ettie is a wonderful creation… Just as The Door won an immediate English-language following, Iza’s Ballad is bound to become one of the most loved books of the year… This publication of Iza’s Ballad, subtle and profound, is a cause for celebration

The writing has a lovely clarity and a relevance that is timeless

Szabo nails with incisive clarity the painful dynamics between the two [central] characters… A perceptive study of family relationships, bereavement and old age, it is harrowingly beautiful

A ruthless exploration of the damage we inflict on one another in the name of love

Szabo…is a rare voice, and this novel about the death of tradition and hope is a marvel of empathy

Magda Szabó was born in 1917 in Debrecen, Hungary. She began her literary career as a poet. In the 1950s she disappeared from the publishing scene for political reasons and made her living by teaching and translating from French and English. She began writing novels, and in 1978 was awarded the Kossuth Prize, the most prestigious literary award in Hungary. Magda Szabó died in 2007.

When Ettie's husband dies, her daughter Iza insists that her mother give up the family house in the countryside and move to Budapest. Displaced from her community and her home, Ettie tries to find her place in this new life, but can't seem to get it right. She irritates the maid, hangs food outside the window because she mistrusts the fridge and, in her naivety and loneliness, invites a prostitute in for tea. 
 
Iza’s Ballad is the story of a woman who loses her life’s companion and a mother trying to get close to a daughter whom she has never truly known. It is about the meeting of the old-fashioned and the modern worlds and the beliefs we construct over a lifetime.

Magda Szabó

Len Rix

Improbably, you lose your heart and head to [The Door], which somehow cuts to the quick of everything that matters and does so in a voice which is, at the same time, materially straightforward and intensely hypnotic

Szabó manages to conjure up as many cliffhangers as an Indiana Jones film. The Door is a triumph. Clever, moving, frightening, it deserves to be a bestseller

One of Hungary’s most important twentieth-century writers

The Door is a deeply strange and equally affecting book, a dark domestic fairy tale about the relationship between a Hungarian writer, Magda, and her taciturn elderly housekeeper, Emerence

No brief summary can do justice to the intelligence and moral complexity of this novel. I picked it up without expectation. I read it with gathering intensity, and a swelling admiration. I finished it, and straightaway started to read it again. It is unusual, original and utterly compelling

Suffice it to say that I’ve been haunted by this novel. Szabo’s lines and images come to my mind unexpectedly, and with them powerful emotions. It has altered the way I understand my own life

The Door has been waiting for us for more than sixteen years. It has just opened

In The Door, Hungary's most famous living author, Magda Szabo, gives a rare insight into the precarious relationship between the "lady writer" and her woman who does...The Door is a valuable document of a vital relationship.

A superbly controlled and involving work of art

'With Frau Szabó, you have caught a golden fish.  Buy all of her novels, the ones she is writing and the ones she will write'

'The Door has been waiting for us from more than sixteen years. It has just opened'

'In The Door the Hungarian Magda Szabó cleverly guides her intense and poignant novel, allowing the tension to rise in a crescendo'

Emerence is a domestic servant – strong, fierce, eccentric, and with a reputation for being a first-rate housekeeper. When Magda, a young Hungarian writer, takes her on she never imagines how important this woman will become to her. It takes twenty years for a complex trust between them to be slowly, carefully built. But Emerence has secrets and vulnerabilities beneath her indomitable exterior which will test Magda’s friendship and change the complexion of both their lives irreversibly. 
 
Elegant, pocket-sized paperbacks, VINTAGE Editions celebrate the audacity and ambition of the written word, transporting readers to wherever in the world literary innovation may be found.

Magda Szabó

Praise for The Door

Improbably, you lose your heart and head to [The Door], which somehow cuts to the quick of everything that matters and does so in a voice which is, at the same time, materially straightforward and intensely h ...

Szabó manages to conjure up as many cliffhangers as an Indiana Jones film. The Door is a triumph. Clever, moving, frightening, it deserves to be a bestseller

One of Hungary’s most important twentieth-century writers

Improbably, you lose your heart and head to [The Door], which somehow cuts to the quick of everything that matters and does so in a voice which is, at the same time, materially straightforward and intensely h ...

Szabó manages to conjure up as many cliffhangers as an Indiana Jones film. The Door is a triumph. Clever, moving, frightening, it deserves to be a bestseller

One of Hungary’s most important twentieth-century writers

Improbably, you lose your heart and head to [The Door], which somehow cuts to the quick of everything that matters and does so in a voice which is, at the same time, materially straightforward and intensely h ...

Szabó manages to conjure up as many cliffhangers as an Indiana Jones film. The Door is a triumph. Clever, moving, frightening, it deserves to be a bestseller

One of Hungary’s most important twentieth-century writers

Books by Magda Szabó

Articles featuring Magda Szabó

7 lesser-known Vintage Classics by women

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