麻豆社

Poet George Szirtes reads his award-winning memoir about his mother, Magda.

Her turbulent life reflects the drama of the 20th century.

She survived incarceration in two different concentration camps during the Second World War and then settled in Hungary - but fled with her family in 1956.

Arriving as a refugee in London, serious illness forced her to abandon professional work and to live at home as a housewife, where she began the process of 鈥淓nglishing鈥� her family.

The book reveals a life told backwards, from the depths of Magda鈥檚 final days to her girlhood as an ambitious photographer in Budapest. The woman who emerges is beautiful, energetic, direct, warm and passionate.

It is a book born of curiosity, of guilt, and of love.

鈥淪hortly before she died she made a tape in which she sang us happy birthday for the future. Not once but several times, once for each birthday, until her voice gave out鈥︹��

George Szirtes is a poet and translator who escaped to Britain with his family after the 1956 Hungarian uprising. He鈥檚 the author of over 25 books of poetry.

鈥楾he Photographer at Sixteen鈥� won the 2020 James Tait Black Prize for Biography.

Omnibus of five parts read by the author.

Abridged and produced by Elizabeth Burke.

First broadcast on 麻豆社 Radio 4 in March 2021.

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