Magda Szabó was a Hungarian novelist and author of poetry, memoir, drama and children’s literature. She wrote about family memory, women’s inner lives and Hungary’s twentieth-century history. She is best known for Freskó (1958), Katalin utca (1969), Abigél (1970) and The Door (Az ajtó, 1987). She received the Baumgarten Prize in 1949 and the József Attila Prize in 1959.
Magda Szabó was born in Debrecen in 1917 into a Protestant family. Her father, Elek Szabó, worked as an academic and public official. He taught her Latin from childhood and encouraged an interest in languages and antiquity. Her mother wrote but never published. Storytelling and informal theatre formed part of her early life.
Szabó attended the Dóczy Institute for Girls’ Education and finished school in 1935. She studied Hungarian and Latin at the István Tisza Hungarian Royal University of Science, later known as the University of Debrecen. She completed her degree in 1940 and wrote a thesis on ancient Roman cosmetics.
Magda Szabó began teaching during the war years. In 1943 and 1944, she taught at a Calvinist girls’ gymnasium in Hódmezővásárhely. She wrote a verse novel about her wartime experiences, Szüret, but did not publish it until 1975. After the war, she moved to Budapest. From 1945 to 1949, she worked in the Ministry of Religious and Public Educational Affairs. She married the writer and translator Tibor Szobotka in 1947.
Her first published works were poetry. She brought out Bárány in 1947 and Vissza az emberig in 1949. The Baumgarten Prize was given to her in 1949, but was withdrawn when the Communist authorities denounced her. She lost her post at the ministry, and censorship restricted her work. During the Stalinist period, she taught in a Calvinist school. She wrote her first novel, Freskó, during those years. It appeared in 1958. In the same year, she published poetry for children and a book for young readers, Mondják meg Zsófikának.
Az őz followed in 1959 and depicted an actress shaped by a deprived past. Her focus on women’s interior worlds recurred in later books. In 1959, she received the József Attila Prize. Through the 1960s, she wrote further fiction for younger readers and adult audiences. Pilátus appeared in 1963 and Tündér Lala in 1965. Katalin utca was published in 1969 and offered a picture of postwar life. Abigél came out in 1970 and became her most widely read story in Hungary. It was adapted for television in 1978 and for musical theatre in 2008.
From 1971, she issued autobiographical fiction, starting with Ókút and then Régimódi történet. She returned to those themes in Für Elise in 2002. She also wrote plays, collected in Az órák és a farkasok in 1975. Erőnk szerint and Béla Király were produced in 1984.
Her later international success came with Az ajtó (The Door) in 1987. The novel followed the bond between a writer and her housekeeper. It was translated twice into English, and in 2015, the American edition was named one of the year’s best books by The New York Times Book Review.
She was elected to the European Academy of Sciences and helped found the Digital Literary Academy. She died in Debrecen in 2007 while reading at home.
