Archive · 15 Aug 2026
Review: Lázár family saga spans Hungary's turbulent twentieth century
Lázár is a book about a rich Hungarian family.
A young writer named Nelio Biedermann wrote it when he was just 22 years old.
The story follows three generations of the Lázár family, from the time when kings and emperors ruled Europe until a big uprising in Hungary in 1956.
The book begins at a big house in a forest, where secrets and lies fill the family.
Some grown-ups have secret romances, and a girl tells a terrible lie about her tutor that gets him killed.
As wars come and empires fall, the family's world slowly disappears.
The writer shows that big history happens through small family moments like dinners and jealousies.
The book has been compared to famous family stories like Buddenbrooks by Thomas Mann.
The reviewer likes the book but says some parts are too long.
Based partly on the author's own family, it is a powerful story about how an old world ended.
Lázár, a family novel by 22-year-old novelist Nelio Biedermann, traces three generations from the Habsburg monarchy through the 1956 Hungarian uprising.
The book has drawn comparisons to Thomas Mann's Buddenbrooks and other great European family sagas.
The story opens in a forest-bordered mansion with Sandor Lázár's horror at his son's birth, followed by affairs, betrayals and a false molestation accusation.
The novel depicts Nazi occupation and Soviet liberation without ideological simplification, including Soviet troops demanding a woman from the family.
Reviewer Ashutosh Bhardwaj finds some sections overextended but praises the novel's vision of history entering lives through private channels.
- Who
- Novelist Nelio Biedermann, whose book Lázár is reviewed by Ashutosh Bhardwaj; the novel is translated by Jamie Bulloch.
- What
- A review of Lázár, a family novel narrating Hungary's turbulent 20th century through three generations of the aristocratic Lázár family.
- When
- The novel spans from the fading years of the Habsburg monarchy in the early 1900s to the aftermath of the 1956 Hungarian uprising; the review appears two decades after György Pálfi's film Taxidermia (2006).
- Where
- The novel is set in Hungary, beginning in a mansion bordered by a forest; surviving family members eventually drift toward Switzerland.
- Why
- Biedermann, partly drawing on his own family history, aims to show how epochal historical events enter human lives through private channels as old Europe collapses.
- Author
- Nelio Biedermann
- Translator
- Jamie Bulloch
- Publisher
- Hachette
- Pages
- 304
- Price
- Rs 699
- Setting
- Hungary, from the Habsburg monarchy era to 1956
- Reviewer
- Ashutosh Bhardwaj