Magda Szabo's unqie approach to historical fiction

Magda Sabo's 1967 novel Katalin Street is unusual in many ways, one of which is that it starts in the then-present and in the next chapter steps back to 1934 and over the course of the several chapters in this relatively short book we build back up to the present moment. The first chapter is difficult for any reader - lots of people introduced, essentially 3 families living in the same household (typical apparently during the housing crises in Budapest in the 1960s) with a complex web of relationships among them, but as the book progresses the dynamics and shifting loyalties emerge and clarify, quite effectively. By the end, Magda has created a powerful portrait of life in her native Hungary over a span of about 30 years that include World War II and the fascist domination (the Jewish family on K Street is hauled off in the night and their teenage daughter is shot to death in her back yard by a German soldier), postwar recriminations and imprisonments (one of the main characters, a young man named Balint, is held a in prisoners' camp for several years - non-Hungarian readers could have used more clarification on this point, as I'm not sure who was holding him prisoner in the post-war years - it may have had to do w/ his resistance, or his fathers (now dead) resistance to Hungary's alliance w/ the Nazis?), Hungary under Stalinist rule (purges, denunciations, re-education), the 1956 uprising against the Soviets, with battles in the streets, and the emergence of a new Hungary, much development of new housing etc., not all of it very attractive but probably necessary. Szabo covers all this ground but not in the manner of a bland, historical novel checking off the facts and dates but from the inside, as experienced by several closely inter-related characters, some of whom thrive, others who die or go into exile:not really historical fiction per se but a personal narrative about how people and families are affected and sometimes crushed by historical forces. My only quibble is with her turn toward the supernatural (the young Jewish girl whom the soldier shoots to death returns at various times as a spirit of observance and even as a human figure seen but not recognized by her friends and neighbors on K Street - a touch of the then-emerging Magic Realism that feels out of place in this work).


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