How estranged may I be from my Central and Eastern European origins for not reviewing and writing too many authors from this intellectually rewarding part of the world? I hope that next year will help me to return to a realm that I used to love and hate so much many springs ago, because sometimes too cruel to be true...
I was familiar with Magda Szabó for a long time as a literary name, but haven´t been able to return to a predictable geopolitical-literary setting for a long time. I do speak Hungarian well and I have a healthy connection to my Hungarian heritage, particularly from the intellectual point of view, through writings of Pétér Esterházy (who even autographed a translated version of his monumental Celestial Harmonies), Pétér Nádas, György Konrád or Imre Kertész and even the complicated László Krasznakorkai. Somehow, I´ve ignored Hungarian women writers and I am still trying to figure out whose fault it is/was. Every time I was back to some Hungarian literary figure, it was always a man´s world. And me, I´ve stop way too early from exploring it in its all small and big details anyway.
The Door is my first direct encounter with her work, and hopefully not the last (I´ve seen many of her books were translated into German as well so it may help to improve my language skills as well). I had access to the book in the English-translation, as an audiobook read by the British actress Sian Thomas whose voice was an excellent choice. 30% of the reason I keep up with the book - whose completion took me a couple of weeks - was because of the affectionate voice of the reader, which suits so well the story itself.
The main storyteller is a writer - probably an alter ego of the writer herself, whose name is mentioned only in the last part of the book, in its diminutive form, Magdushka). Shortly before the story starts she was allowed to write again - we are talking about a Hungary under communism - and she is living together to her writer husband in a village. As her intellectual and social assignments diversifies, she needs a househelper. Then, she meets Emerence, with whom a 20-year complex relationship develops. Emerence is more than a household help, she turns into a practical, mundane alter ego fo the writer, challenging her and creating a variety of situations outside the writer´s intellectual comfort zone. It is a complex relationship that goes far beyond the usual categorization of two women belonging to two different mental lanes and upbringing. For me, it has to do with the very role of the writer and the intellectual in a society, the denials and the deceits. Translated into a very specific historical and political context - which unfolds permanently cinema-like in the background: the Horthy years, the Stalinist years, the censorship, the 1956 ´Revolution´ (with quotes because personally I think that unfortunatelly those events did not change anything revolutionary, except the wave of persecutions against intellectuals and the number of Hungarians who had to leave the country) - it defines the very condition of the Hungarian writer and intellectual at the given historical time.
I´ve finished the book a couple of days already, and keep thinking about it. Although it belongs to a specific context, The Door is more than a Hungarian story. It belongs to the register of books dedicated to intellectual struggles and stories and the subtle art of the writer make it valuable beyond its time. I can only hope that in the next weeks and months will be able to share more stories authored by writers from this geographical realm that the more I am isolated from - due to the current travel restrictions, among others - the more I long to connect.
Rating: 4 stars
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