This is an awe-inspiring book, at the end I could not stop crying, although I already knew it. The translation (from Hungarian) is excellent, although it disturbed me that the name of the
girl was changed. It has been written back in 1958 and unfortunately the book is available only in second-hand bookshops as early GDR publication. The original title "Mondják meg Zsófikának" is not mentioned at all in the imprint, but there is a remark that sales outside Hungary are permitted only in socialist countries. Magda Szabó puts her readers directly inside in the heads of her figures and so they suffer all along together. The main perspective is of an 11-year old girl, who just lost her beloved
father by a sudden heart attack. Erika is unbelievably shy and reserved. She tries to
help her
mother wherever she can. They do not really get along, not only because of Erika’s speechlessness, but also because of the only theoretically pedagogic mother’s complete lack of
understanding. The
authoress appears under the name of Martha Szabó as an understanding teacher and problem solver. The atmosphere during the few weeks in the hot summer of 1957 in Budapest is tangible. Erika is desperately looking for an
answer; she needs to know what her father wanted to tell her before he died and although she cannot find the answer verbally, at the end she is able to understand. There are also exciting episodes with her best friend Dora, with whom she is actually not allowed to speak at all. She is trying hard to follow this (unreasonable) rule, but she cannot help but fall into the vortex of events and misunderstandings. In 2003 the authoress finally celebrated her late successes with the book "The door" in France, for which she got the foreign “Femina” literary award.
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