The Door

Author: Szabo, Magda

Modern & contemporary fiction (post c 1945)

Published on 16 April 2026 by Vintage Publishing (Vintage Classics) in the United Kingdom.

'A dark domestic fairy tale' New York TimesA young writer employs a housekeeper - and slowly finds herself the sole keeper of the older woman's sercrets.

Magda is a writer, Emerence her housekeeper. Magda is new to their quiet Hungarian town, while Emerence, fierce and enigmatic, knows and is known by all. Though Emerence enters Magda’s home whenever she pleases, the door to Emerence’s own strange abode remains barred. Still, somehow, over the course of twenty years, an intimate trust is built between the two, rich with shared confidences.

Yet when this trust is betrayed one dark afternoon, the pair’s complex relationship will be left forever altered, and Magda will find herself haunted until the end of her days.

For not all doors are made to be opened.

'A bone-shaking book' New YorkerTranslated by Len Rix