After her husband’s death, Effie finds herself uprooted from her home and her previous existence, with barely any say in the matter, in order to live with her daughter Iza in Iza’s modern apartment in Budapest. Overwhelmed by grief and bewildered by the move to a completely alien environment, she struggles to find a purpose to her new life. Everything she does to try to help her daughter seems to be the wrong thing, leading to friction between them. Iza is a successful doctor, but does she actually understand anyone, especially those closest to her?

Magda Szabó (1917-2007) was one of Hungary’s most successful novelists. For ten years, between 1949 and 1959, her books were censored by the communist regime.

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