The Hungarian Despair of Magda Szabó’s “The Door” | The New Yorker

To read “The Door” is to feel turned inside out, faced with our foibles when we wake up from the trance of our self-importance.

Save this story Save this story On a recent cold, rainy Friday afternoon, I met my friend, whom I’ll call Nell—a small, compact, unflappable person with a halo of gold hair who ran away to join the circus when she was young. Nell was reading a book. When she raised her eyes from the page, she looked like someone who had stepped back from the curb at the very last moment before being hit by a bus. The book she was reading was a paperback novel with a pale gray cover, by the Hungarian writer Magda Szabó , called “The Door.” It was first published in Hungary, in 1987, then here in 1995, and was r

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