They lived in Gyula, Szombathely, Alsókubin, Sepsiszentgyörgy, and Lugos during Szathmári's early years.
The young Szathmári was sickly with a weak body and a sensitive nervous system up through his fifteenth year.
The youth suffered almost continually from angina; he was also tormented by typhus, measles, chickenpox, whooping cough, diphtheria, and sinusitis.
"..my grandfather told me the anecdote in which the gypsy asked to be shown the enemy before a battle, because he wanted to make peace with them.
At that time I thought the anecdote true, and considered the gypsies more advanced, being they were only ones able to think right.” After the death of his two older brothers, he became the eldest child (the fourth sibling died later), and often had to take care of the younger ones.
While attending the first class in elementary school he finished the exercises in his mathematics text in one week, without knowing the formulas.
Szathmári graduated in Lugos (now Lugoj, Romania) and in 1915 enrolled in the mechanical engineering program at the Technical University of Budapest (Hungary), but found this dull and, as he perceived it, limiting to his thoughts.
In the beginning he wanted to leave Budapest only provisionally because of the communist rule, but an opportunity to teach students at home developed.
In 1921, Szathmári's father has to choose whether to continue serving the Romanian government or to travel to Hungary.
The father stayed with the six children and undertook the process of becoming a Romanian official, which cost him the sympathy of his acquaintances, the local Hungarians.
Starting in 1924 he worked at MÁVAG, railway machinery plant, and began his true professional life.
During his studies, Szathmári participated in the Székely Egyetemi és Foiskolai Hallgatók Egyesülete (SZEFHE, Association of Students of the Székely University and Institutions of Higher Learning), where he became acquainted with the Habsburgellenes Liga (Anti-Habsburg League) and the BARTHA Miklós Társaság (Association of Bartha Miklós).
When Charles IV wanted to retake the Hungarian throne in 1921, the young people took up arms at the call of these organizations and awaited battle at Kelenföld, but without adequate ammunition.
Szathmári became a speaker of the language starting in 1935, when he participated in the a workers' culture course in Budapest, taught by the famous Esperantist poet Emeriko Baranyai, who helped Szathmári find his way to SAT, of which he remained a member until his 1974 death in Budapest.
When the family lived in Szombathely, his father wanted to enroll him in the Roman Catholic School, as it was the closest.
The young Szathmáry thought writing novels a bore compared to inventing ideas for machine.
Influenced by Karinthy, he began working during 1919–1921 on a mathematics textbook and put on paper his first small attempts at belles lettres, called The Serious Person (A komoly ember).
This works evinces a satirical view of someone who speaks of pacifist convictions, but who in the end resorts to violence.
In addition to Vojaĝo al Kazohinio, which was originally written in 1935, and before the appearance of the Esperanto original, which was published three times in Hungarian translation, there appeared in book form Szathmári's short story collection Maŝinmondo ("MachineWorld") (J. Régulo, 1964), Tréfán kívül, a translation into Hungarian of the Esperanto novel Kredu min, sinjorino!
by Cezaro Rossetti (1957) and the Esperanto translation of a Hungarian children's book Ĉu ankau vi scias?
Other short fiction by Szathmári appeared in reviews such as Norda Prismo, La Nica Literatura Revuo, Belarto, Monda Kulturo and Hungara Vivo.
Szathmári's novel Hiába ("In Vain") could be proven to be in the same style as that of the winner, but the appearance of this anti-Communist work in 1958 would have put him in danger of prison.