Autumn 2026 – Anna van Besouw – Lázár

Imagine. The South of Hungary. January 5th in the early 1900​’​s. A large manor at the border of a dark forest. There, “the translucent child with water-blue eyes” is born. We learn that the child’s father is a baron who, probably due to his own shortcomings, quietly confesses that he perhaps would be better off killing the child immediately. Are we intrigued?

In 2025, Swiss author Nelio Biedermann published the German novel Lázár, a gothic family story set in Hungary. Spread out over six​ ​parts, the novel follows the aristocratic family Lázár, ​​ in a large manor by the edge of a forest. Through the exploration of the Lázár bloodline, Biedermann provides an insight into the power structures embedded in generational wealth and their interconnection with war and occupation in Hungary in the 20th century.

The novel was positively received in its original language and was translated into English by Jamie Bulloch in early 2026. Biedermann, a debut novelist, is praised for his accomplishments in his first translated novel. Marcel Theroux, in The Guardian, describes an impressive historical approach from an author who “wasn’t even alive when the Twin Towers fell” and the promising future that Biedermann has within an ambitious literary lineage.

Biedermann sets off Lázár with a disturbing image of a distorted family dynamic. Lajos, the boy with the almost see-through skin and water-blue eyes, is born as a result of the Baroness’ affair with a young groom working in the manor. The Baron, Sandor, who cannot remember the faces of his employees, is unaware of the similarities between the groom and his son. To ensure the plot evolves, Biedermann evidently needs to get rid of this character. The transactional marriage between the Baron and the Baronesse is of utmost importance to illustrate the lack of love and empathy that leads to poor decision-making in Lajos’ life. Thus, the groom is simply kicked by a horse only a few weeks after the child’s birth and dies. In a time in which horses were the main transportation, death by one might not strike as unconvincing. However, that the young groom who works with horses everyday dies to one is perhaps a bit too comical to be realistic.

Lajos is unaware of who his biological father is, and the story unfolds into an exploration of his disconnect from him. Unfortunately, this intriguing portrait of an unrealistic looking child with translucent skin is not explored throughout the rest of the novel. The only function it serves is to create a visible difference between him and his father, but this difference in appearance is redundant since Lajos’ disconnect from and struggle with his father result​    ​ from actions, not the mere fact that he is not his biological child. The anticipation, set from the get-go, is dimmed throughout the novel and leads to an unsatisfying shift towards historical narratives of the Second World War.

The first four parts of the novel introduce many minor characters who function as instigators of action for each individual family member. The novel leads into the exploration of internal conflicts of characters who are removed from reality due to the gothic and magical air that surrounds them and, furthermore, are oftentimes explored on a superficial level. Their deaths and loss are irrelevant to our perception of the real world. It is hard to feel empathy for these characters, who are only on the page for a small amount of time and reflect a brief moment in time for the Lázár family.

One of these minor characters is the chaplain Edmund, who moves into the manor in the early 1940s. Pista, the Lázár grandchild, discloses that he despises Edmund for his vast love for life in its essence. However, Edmund’s character is regarded as somewhat out of touch with reality. Whilst Pista is concerned with the German troops invading neutral Belgium, Edmund is grateful to the Lord “for the return of spring, the resurrection of life, the carpets of snowdrops, daisies and primroses, the rays of sun on the rear of the stable that helped the hawthorn unfurl its silky petals and stick out its bundles of gleaming stamens.” Pista is determined to discover that Edmund is hiding something behind his exterior of love and happiness. He follows Edmund back to his room and overhears voices from the “dark guest room.”

Edmund embodies a mysterious spirit unconcerned with the outside world but is eventually still stricken by the war. However, once Edmund is arrested, it is clear that it is something about his mysterious actions has led to his arrest. To what extent he is actually resisting the German occupation is not clear. Biedermann seems unsuccessful in balancing the gothic mysterious atmosphere of the novel with the historical context. The harsh depiction of Lajos’ involvement ​​in the deportation of Jews in the next few chapters leaves the character Edmund in the back of the mind and rushes the reader’s attention to much drearier circumstances.

One of the characters who dies rather early in the novel is Sandor, Lajos’ father. Sandor, as the Baron, is the image of power and wealth. However, his life takes a turn once his wife dies and the war, of which whispers had never reached the manor, is announced in the paper. It is only then that we see the cracks in the exterior of this confident man. Sandor finds comfort in alcohol, which helps “combat the feeling that he was unable to cope with life.” Merely twenty pages later, he stumbles on the first step of the stairs and falls to his death. In comparison to Edmund, Sandor is a much more prevalent character in the story, and he, just like the groom, receives a rather comical death. Even more so, it feels too easy to get rid of his presence and again feeds into the idea that his death functions merely as a backstory for Lajos’ life and actions.

The gothic and magical aesthetic of the novel that makes the story compelling wears off around the start of the Second World War. The characters can no longer escape from reality and their defences of wealth and power start to crumble. However, it is not only the characters that are confronted by this sudden shift, but the reader as well. The historical context is suddenly the main contributor to the plot, especially the harsh reality of the Second World War. Lajos, for example, starts to work as an officer for the Germans. He “looked after organisational matters. The Jews had to be listed, labelled, stripped of their rights, expropriated and ghettoised.” At first, Lajos is able to convince himself that people are transported merely to work, but when thousands of people are transported to Auschwitz, he no longer can. The novel leaves many of these instances open, assuming the reader knows the trajectory of the Second World War and what being deported implies.

The sudden shift leads to a strange disconnect between the two parts of the novel. In the first half, the deaths of certain characters are a necessary evil for the development of the plot. Especially because of their comical or unnecessary nature. Even more so, they serve a more fictional function in a gothic sphere. The abrupt move towards deaths embedded in historical accuracy feels unnecessary and, at some moments, distasteful towards those who have lost their lives in, for example, the Second World War.

However, it is crucial to bear in mind that the novel was translated from German, which has implications for both its cultural and stylistic context. Biedermann is of Hungarian descent and grew up in Switzerland after his parents fled in the 1950s. How one grapples with the past is very much embedded in national and cultural memories. Even more so, stylistic choices and changes could have been made by the translator Jamie Bulloch. Nevertheless, we would hope that stylistic choices would be reflected even in the English translation. The groom being kicked by a horse, killing him merely two sentences after his affair with the Baroness, would expectantly hold the same comical effect in German.

Consequently, this interplay between the magical and the real dismisses some of the important matters and historical events presented in the novel. Even more so, it creates a complicated sphere in which the loss of so many people in different conflicts of war and occupation are intersected with fictional, and often comical or magical deaths. It is important to consider whether Biedermann is to blame for this or if, by writing magical realism, the underlying responsibility for that realism is always put into question.

One of the most popular examples of magical realism is Salman Rushdie’s Midnight Children. The novel, published in 1981, was awarded that year’s Booker Prize, the Booker of Bookers prize in 1993, and the Best of Bookers in 2008. Critics praise the novel for the way it implements the magical elements as crucial pillars for the development of the story within its historical context of the British occupation of India. The graceful way in which Rushdie executes the genre again raises the question whether Lázár does the same. Perhaps the novel would be better off as two separate stories. The gothic mysterious and often comical depiction of an aristocratic family which​​ enthralls the reader from the start is overshadowed by the vicious reality of Hungarian society throughout the war and other conflicts in the 20th century. Neither aspect of the novel is getting the attention it deserves.

So, again, we imagine a large manor in the early 1900s at the border of a large forest where an aristocratic family lives. The youngest boy is born and has see-through skin and water-blue eyes. We emerge in a gothic imagery where the Baron of this large manor considers murdering his son merely minutes after his birth. Are we intrigued? Or are we misled and let down into a dangerous territory of magical realism?