From the author of The Door, selected by The New York Times Book
Review as one of the ten best books of 2015
An NYRB Classics Original
Like Magda Szabó's internationally acclaimed novel The Door, Iza's
Ballad is a striking story of the relationship between two women, in
this case a mother and a daughter. Ettie, the mother, is old and from an
older world than the rapidly modernizing Communist Hungary of the years
after World War II. From a poor family and without formal education,
Ettie has devoted her life to the cause of her husband, Vince, a
courageous magistrate who had been blacklisted for political reasons
before the war. Iza, their daughter, is as brave and conscientious as
her father: Active in the resistance against the Nazis, she is now a
doctor and a force for progress. Iza lives and works in Budapest, and
when Vince dies, she is quick to bring Ettie to the city to make sure
her mother is close and can be cared for. She means to do everything
right, and Ettie is eager to do everything to the satisfaction of the
daughter she is so proud of. But good intentions aside, mother and
daughter come from two different worlds and have different ideas of what
it means to lead a good life. Though they struggle to accommodate each
other, increasingly they misunderstand and hurt each other, and the
distance between them widens into an abyss. . . .
