"The Door" is an unsettling exploration of the relationship between two very dif
ferent women. Magda is a writer, educated, married to an academic, public-spirit
ed, with an on-again-off-again relationship to Hungary's Communist authorities.
Emerence is a peasant, illiterate, impassive, abrupt, seemingly ageless. She liv
es alone in a house that no one else may enter, not even her closest relatives.
She is Magda's housekeeper and she has taken control over Magda's household, bec
oming indispensable to her. And Emerence, in her way, has come to depend on Magd
a. They share a kind of love--at least until Magda's long-sought success as a wr
iter leads to a devastating revelation.
Len Rix's prizewinning translation of
"The Door" at last makes it possible for American readers to appreciate the mast
erwork of a major modern European writer.
