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Guantánamo Diary, Lurid & Cute and The Door

Gitmo stories, fantastical fiction and a contemporary classic

The Door

Magda Szabó is a major Hungarian novelist who died in 2007. The Door is one of her most acclaimed works and this fine translation by Len Rix with a new introduction by Ali Smith has just been reissued by NYRB Classics, finally bringing it to the attention of North American readers. As Ms. Smith says, only three per cent of books that English readers consume are translated works which means there are many foreign language gems awaiting discovery.

The Door is such a work. It is ostensibly the story of two women – an autobiographical narrator hires a cleaning lady called Emerence, who is eccentric to say the least. The novel begins with a recurring nightmare of a door which the narrator fails to open. The writer then takes us back more than twenty years to her first meeting with Emerence, a woman who chooses her employers with care.

The “lady writer” craves intimacy with Emerence, but her initial advances are repulsed. Emerence’s biography appears piecemeal and, like many contemporary Central European twentieth century lives, is formed by the political and military catastrophes of the time. There is also apparently much tragedy in her past – twin siblings killed by lightning and a mother who then throws herself down a well.

Magda Szabó, The Door book cover

Emerence is a mystic without religion who has the gift of second sight – she can read minds and foretell the future. She lives in a house where the shutters are always closed and where no-one else is allowed to enter. The narrator pieces together Emerence’s past – tales of heroism, altruism, death and bad love which, together, have made her the person she is.

On one level this is a fabulously realised biography of a fantastical heroine, but given the author’s own history of being silenced by Stalinists and the date of publication in 1987, one can read many interpretations of contemporary events into The Door.

The narrator suspects Emerence of stealing from Jews in 1944, whereas the truth is that she sheltered them and adopted a Jewish child. She also shelters wounded German and Russian soldiers.

The narrator and her partner adopt a stray puppy, who becomes more Emerence’s pet than theirs. Eventually Emerence and her employers become close, the lady writer is finally admitted behind the door and is named in her servant’s will.

As the hardworking, independent and altruistic woman becomes ill, the narrator and neighbours are forced to break into Emerence’s redoubt to save her from death. The final part of the book details Emerence’s decline and demise and the void of guilty feelings she leaves behind.

“I understand our recent history as I never had before” says the author towards the end of her book. Mostly, this book is about how events shape personality. Both Emerence and the “lady writer” are moulded by war, death and totalitarianism. It becomes apparent that Emerence’s life is a heroic endeavour against the odds and as soon as she admits the lady writer into her life, her betrayal and the author’s subsequent remorse seem inevitable.

The Door is a fine novel; on a personal level it is a rather picaresque tale of a strange friendship. Yet the novel works on a wider scale as an epic struggle of an individual against circumstance. This is a book which should appeal to all lovers of fine modern literature. ®

Magda Szabó, The Door book coverAuthor Magda Szabó
Title The Door
Publisher Vintage (UK), NYRB Classics (US)
Price £8.99 (Hardback), £6.49 (eBook)
More info Publication web site (UK) and reissue web site (US)

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