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Iza's Ballad

Magda Szabó

When Ettie's husband dies, her daughter Iza insists that her mother give up the family house in the countryside and move to Budapest. Displaced from her community and her home, Ettie tries to find her place in this new life, but can't seem to get it right. She irritates the maid, hangs food outside the window because she mistrusts the fridge and, in her naivety and loneliness, invites a prostitute in for tea.

Iza’s Ballad is the story of a woman who loses her life’s companion and a mother trying to get close to a daughter whom she has never truly known. It is about the meeting of the old-fashioned and the modern worlds and the beliefs we construct over a lifetime.

GenresBudapest (Hungary)Fiction

327 pages, 6 editions

English edition · First published 2014 by Vintage Books · ISBN 9780099532385

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Editions

6 editions

English

  • Iza's Ballad · Vintage Books · 2015 · ISBN 9780099532385 This page
  • Iza's Ballad · Random House Publishing Services · 2016 · ISBN 9781681370354
  • Iza's ballad · New York Review Books · 2016 · ISBN 9781681370347
  • Iza's Ballad · Vintage Digital · 2014 · ISBN 9781448156078
  • Iza's Ballad · Harvill Secker · 2014 · ISBN 9781846552656

Swedish

  • Izas Ballad · Nilsson förlag · 2018 · ISBN 9789188155511

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