The Door

We will travel to Hungary for our H read this time.

Lauded by the New York Times as one of Hungary’s most important twentieth-century writers, Magda Szabó (1919 -2007) was a novelist who also wrote wrote dramas, essays, studies, memoirs, poetry and children’s literature. Her books were translated into 42 languages, and her greatest success in western Europe came with this book written in 1987, The Door. The story of a domestic help and her complex relationship with the narrator, The Door was welcomed to favourable reviews in England, where it appeared in Len Rix’s translation in 2005. This is the book we are treating ourselves to as part of our Reading Around the World journey.

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.

If you’d like to join us to discuss this novel, please contact us to reserve your place.

You may order a copy of the book HERE .