[3] Her father, Elek Szabó (1879–1959), an academic and public official, taught her to speak Latin fluently from childhood, gave her the foundation of her extensive knowledge of European antiquity and an appreciation of ancient Roman and Greek history and literature.

Their (unacknowledged) fictional elements, which are incompatible with each other, make details of Szabó’s personal life, childhood, and family relationships difficult to ascertain.

[4] Szabó began her writing career as a poet and in 1947 she published her first book of poetry, Bárány ("Lamb"), which was followed by Vissza az emberig ("Back to the Human") in 1949.

[6] The novel tells the story of a puritan family coming together for a funeral, and examines questions of hypocrisy and Hungarian history.

[2] In the same year, she published another book of poetry, Bárány Boldizsár ("Lawrence the Lamb"), and a novel for younger female readers, Mondják meg Zsófikának (translated into English as "Tell Sally ...").

[2] Az őz ("The Fawn"), published in 1959, is a novel centred around an actress and her struggle to overcome a difficult, impoverished childhood.

[1] Her most widely read novel Abigél ("Abigail", 1970) is an adventure story about a young girl living in a Calvinist girls-only school in eastern Hungary during World War II.

[1] Claire Messud writes in the New York Times that reading The Door, has completely changed her outlook on life while Cynthia Zarin, contributor to The New Yorker, calls it "a bone-shaking book.

[11] Lucy Jeffery discusses how Szabó’s descriptions of the domestic in Iza's Ballad, Katalin Street, and The Door convey the impact of Hungary’s troubled political history on the concept of the home/homeland.

Jeffery and Váradi conclude their article by remarking that 'In Abigél, Szabó demonstrates that in the wake of Trianon, negotiations between the distinctiveness of Hungarian cultural identity on the one hand and a uniform, systematised global space on the other produce divisive and inconclusive results that lead to a split definition of Hungary as Nagymagyarország and Hungary as Magyarország.