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The Door

Brief Description
A dark domestic fairytale by Hungary's most important twentieth-century writer. Nothing is more mysterious than another human soul. Magda is a writer, Emerence her housekeeper. Magda is new to their quiet Hungarian town, while Emerence, fierce and enigmatic, knows and is known by all. Though she... Read More
Format: Paperback / softback
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A dark domestic fairytale by Hungary's most important twentieth-century writer.

Nothing is more mysterious than another human soul.

Magda is a writer, Emerence her housekeeper. Magda is new to their quiet Hungarian town, while Emerence, fierce and enigmatic, knows and is known by all. Though she enters Magda's home whenever she pleases, the door to Emerence's own strange abode remains barred. Still, somehow, over the course of twenty years, an intimate trust is built between the two, rich with secrets.

Yet when this trust is betrayed one dark afternoon, the pair's complex relationship will be left forever altered, and Magda will find herself haunted until the end of her days. For not all doors are made to be opened.

A dark domestic fairy tale New York Times

Translated by Len Rix

Book Details

INFORMATION

ISBN: 9781529940190

Publisher: Vintage Publishing

Format: Paperback / softback

Date Published: 16 April 2026

Country: United Kingdom

Imprint: Vintage Classics

Contributors:

  • Translated by Len Rix

Audience: General / adult

DIMENSIONS

Spine width: 18.0mm

Width: 128.0mm

Height: 196.0mm

Weight: 206g

Pages: 272

About the Author

Magda Szab 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 Szab died in 2007.

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    "One of Hungary's most important twentieth-century writers" New York Times "Magda Szabó's fiction shows the travails of modern Hungarian history from oblique but sharply illuminating angles" Economist Eszter Encsy is an acclaimed actress, funny and outrageous, quick-witted but callous. Yet even flushed with the success of adulthood, Eszter craves acceptance of herself as she really is and of the person...
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  • Abigail
    A teenage girl's difficult journey towards adulthood in a time of war. Abigail is described as "A school story for grownups that is also about our inability or refusal to protect children from history" by SARAH MOSS. "Of all Szabo's novels, Abigail deserves the widest readership. It's an adventure story, brilliantly written" — TIBOR FISCHER. Of all her novels, Magda...
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  • Abigail
    From the author of The Door, a beloved coming-of-age tale set in WWII-era Hungary. Abigail, the story of a headstrong teenager growing up during World War II, is the most beloved of Magda Szabó’s books in her native Hungary. Gina is the only child of a general, a widower who has long been happy to spoil his bright and willful...
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