"Szabó has created a character of defiant complexity and perverse, utterly plausible self-destructiveness. . . . Szabó's psychological acuity, amply on display in her later novels, is thoroughly present here too." –Claire Messud,
Harper's Magazine "Len Rix, the translator of three other novels by Szabó (1917-2007), renders Eszter's blunt, merciless narration in smoothly cold prose." –Nick Holdstock,
TLS "This is a story of how a monster is made and of how successive disorienting, alienating crises in twentieth-century Hungarian history–and most of all the distorting crisis of poverty, the crisis of class inequality and class resentment–has made its monsters." –Meghan Racklin,
Asymptote
"It is hard to choose among Magda Szabó's novels which is the most powerful or most unforgettable, but
The Fawn stands with
The Door, not only because one cannot put it down but because it is a study of love found and betrayed and the personal tragedies that in Hungary were made so acute by World War II." –Donald Rayfield