The Door

Author: Magda Szabo

I am always inspired with stories of strong personalities. I recall being blown over in my adolescent years by Howard Roark from Ayn Rand’s classic, Fountainhead. In this book the strong willed heroine is the maid, Emerence. She is described as almost super-human and there is a role-reversal in terms of the maid and her employer, Magda. Emerence requires references of the people that she is going to work for. In her words “I don’t wash just anyone’s dirty linen”. Emerence is clearly very good at her job, but she is also very strong willed in terms of her opinions and idiosyncrasies. The book gets into many of these episodes and you find yourself getting sucked into the daily squabbles and eager to find out what exactly is hidden behind the surface of this super-maid. What was her childhood like, what does she do at home when she is not working? Szabo does a really good job of keeping the suspense and you are left guessing to what happens behind closed doors in Emerence’s house.

This is an excellent piece of literature that was originally published in 1987 in Hungary and has won numerous awards. After reading the book, I was curious to see if this was in any way based on Magda’s real life and I was surprised to find out that there are a lot of parallels with the story here. Read it and do your own research!