Lázár
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About the book
'The snow of the dying century still lay on the edge of the dark forest when Lajos von Lázár, the translucent child with water-blue eyes, first glimpsed the man he would believe to be his father for his whole life and beyond.' Lajos von Lázár is brought into this world with the dawn of the new century, and his birth is both a miracle and a curse, his true patrimony a secret he will never know. The Lázárs have ruled their Hungarian lands for generations. In their ancient castle by the edge of a dark forest that compels all who enter it to madness, they succumb to every vice and live only to satiate their desires. But the old order is crumbling, and the days of the Hapsburg Monarchy are numbered. When Lajos inherits, they at last have a baron who can reignite the old splendours, but not even his abilities are proof against the ravages of war and occupation. It will fall to his children - a boy who talks to shadows and a girl who eschews her blue blood - to find a way to stand against oppression and take the first faltering steps towards freedom. A sweeping epic, taking the reader from the beginning of the twentieth century to the Hungarian National Uprising of 1956, Lázár would be a phenomenal achievement for a writer of any age. With its air of timeless wisdom, it reads like rediscovered classic, making it all the more remarkable that it was written when the author was just twenty-one years old. Translated from the German by Jamie Bulloch.
Where the score comes from
The sources average 7.7 across 20 ratings — not yet many, so the reader vote carries 12% of the weight and the rest pulls toward the Rankings average of 7.8. That is how 7.6 comes out.
| Source | Average | Ratings | Weight |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hardcover | 7.7 | 20 | 100% |
Reader voices
The most-liked reviews on Hardcover (credited to their authors).
“Nelio Biedermann was born in Zurich in 2003, which means he wrote this multigenerational saga of Hungarian aristocratic collapse, wartime complicity, Soviet expropriation, and inherited cowardice at an age when most writers are still workshopping their first short story about a difficult childhood. He is…”