One of The New York Times Book Review's 10 Best Books of 2015
An NYRB Classics Original
The Door is an unsettling exploration of the relationship between two
very different women. Magda is a writer, educated, married to an
academic, public-spirited, with an on-again-off-again relationship to
Hungary's Communist authorities. Emerence is a peasant, illiterate,
impassive, abrupt, seemingly ageless. She lives 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, becoming
indispensable to her. And Emerence, in her way, has come to depend on
Magda. They share a kind of love--at least until Magda's long-sought
success as a writer leads to a devastating revelation.
Len Rix's prizewinning translation of The Door at last makes it
possible for American readers to appreciate the masterwork of a major
modern European writer.