![]() ![]() The narrator of The Door is unnamed – sometimes titled ‘the lady writer’, struggling to cope with both her writing and her domestic tasks she appears to be a thinly veiled portrait of Szabó herself. There is no one to help her, and eventually she is awoken by her own screams. The novel opens with a powerful dream sequence, the narrator haunted by the recurring dream of a door, a locked door, a door she is unable to open. “I know now, what I didn’t then, that affection can’t always be expressed in calm, orderly, articulate ways and that one cannot prescribe the form it should take for anyone else.” This novel first published in Hungary in 1987 was an international success, and was made into a film starring Helen Mirren – which I am now anxious to see. She began writing again, novels this time, and in 1978 was awarded a major literary prize, again something which happens to the narrator of The Door. ![]() She was initially a poet, but was prevented from publishing for political reasons in the 1950s – a fate shared by the narrator of The Door. ![]() Magda Szabó was born in 1917 in Debrecen, Hungary. As far as I am aware (correct me if I am wrong anyone who knows differently) Iza’s Ballad and The Door are the only works by Magda Szabó available in English. I had originally planned on reading Iza’s Ballad also by Magda Szabó which I have had in paperback for months, but as I was away from home I read The Door on kindle instead. ![]() Only my second read for #WITmonth, but what a fantastic read it was. ![]()
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