The Door
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Description
A young writer, struggling for success, employs an elderly woman called Emerence to be her housekeeper.
From their first encounter it is clear that Emerence is no ordinary maid.
Although everyone in the neighbourhood knows and respects her, no one knows anything about her private life or has ever crossed her threshold. Only a great drama in the writer's life prompts Emerence to unveil glimpses of her traumatic past - a past which sheds light on her peculiar behaviour.
The Door brilliantly evokes the development of the bond between these two very different women, and the tragic ending to their relationship.
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From their first encounter it is clear that Emerence is no ordinary maid.
Although everyone in the neighbourhood knows and respects her, no one knows anything about her private life or has ever crossed her threshold. Only a great drama in the writer's life prompts Emerence to unveil glimpses of her traumatic past - a past which sheds light on her peculiar behaviour.
The Door brilliantly evokes the development of the bond between these two very different women, and the tragic ending to their relationship.
show more
Product details
- Paperback | 272 pages
- 129 x 198 x 16mm | 193g
- 05 Oct 2006
- Vintage Publishing
- Vintage
- London, United Kingdom
- English
- 0099470284
- 9780099470281
- 38,119
Review Text
"Improbably, you lose your heart and head to [The Door], which somehow cuts to the quick of everything that matters and does so in a voice which is, at the same time, materially straightforward and intensely hypnotic"
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Review quote
"Improbably, you lose your heart and head to [The Door], which somehow cuts to the quick of everything that matters and does so in a voice which is, at the same time, materially straightforward and intensely hypnotic" -- Simon Schama * Financial Times * "Szabo manages to conjure up as many cliffhangers as an Indiana Jones film. The Door is a triumph. Clever, moving, frightening, it deserves to be a bestseller" -- Tibor Fischer * Daily Telegraph * "One of Hungary's most important twentieth-century writers" * New York Times * "The Door is a deeply strange and equally affecting book, a dark domestic fairy tale about the relationship between a Hungarian writer, Magda, and her taciturn elderly housekeeper, Emerence" * New York Times * "No brief summary can do justice to the intelligence and moral complexity of this novel. I picked it up without expectation. I read it with gathering intensity, and a swelling admiration. I finished it, and straightaway started to read it again. It is unusual, original and utterly compelling" * Scotsman *
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About Magda Szabo
Magda Szabo 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 Szabo died in 2007.
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