Magda Szabó was born in Debrecen in 1917 to a highly educated family of the elite.

Considered a real living classic of Hungarian literature, some called her the “protestant Mauriac” as she often depicted the repressed desires of the inhabitants of the Grande Plaine, who were mainly protestant or parpaillots.

Her first books were published just after the Second World War, when she was celebrated as one of the great literary hopefuls. After 1948, for political reasons, she disappeared from the literary scene. For many years, she made a living by translating and teaching.

It was at the end of the 1950s that she met with huge success. In 1959, she received the Attila Jozsef prize and in 1978, the Lajos Kossuth prize. And her reputation only continued to grow. In 1987 her novel The Door was an international success. Although this work of art was not immediately translated in France, where it appeared in 2003 and was awarded the Prix Femina étranger, it was translated in Germany, the United Kingdom and the United States. In 1992, she was awarded the Betz Corporation prize in the United States.

The first volume of her autobiography has just been published in Hungary.