BookTalk introduces readers to a carefully chosen, provocative selection of novels for reading and informal discussion, considering the author’s writing techniques and the character’s personal journeys. Readings include translations of books from other countries and cultures in the search for fictions that illuminate the lives and understanding of those from all across the globe.
This class focuses on Abigail (1970) by Magda Szabó, English translation in 2020 by Len Rix. This suspenseful novel is Szabó's most popular and best known work. Set in Hungary during World War II, the fiction follows the headstrong teenage protagonist Gina, who was sent away to a grim religious boarding school by her widowed father, an army general who was called away suddenly on a mission. The titular Abigail is a sculpture in the school garden with the legendary power to aid students who drop handwritten entreaties into her urn. Deeply unhappy with the school's rules and uniformity and ostracized by her peers, she soon suspects the existence of a real person behind the statue's myth, perhaps one and the same as the town anti-Nazi revolutionary. Gina eventually befriends her classmates and cultivates individuality and dissent in an atmosphere of rules and regulations.
Szabo is the author of the prizewinning novel, The Door (2015).
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