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Lazar
Nelio Biedermann, Jamie Bulloch
£16.99
This book is scheduled to be published on 26/03/2026.
You can order it now and we'll ship it once available.
Mr B's review
This is a tale of a crumbling dynasty being destroyed simultaneously from outside and within. If the endless chain of ill-advised liaisons and tortured souls don’t bring the house of Lazar to its knees, then the end of the Habsburgs, the Second World War and Soviet occupation surely will.
Biedermann himself is the 22-year old descendant of Hungarian nobility and his talent for writing is precocious. I was hooked from the very first words, “The snow of the dying century still lay on the edge of the forest…” and the very first character description, “the translucent child with water-blue eyes”. The evocative imagery pours down and the endlessly flawed characters pepper the story with dark humour.
At times it feels like a homage to Central European masters like Sandor Marai or the great Sicilian novel “The Leopard”, and it holds up superbly against that illustrious company. – Nic
Description
“Lazar is an exquisite and masterly pronouncement that a gifted young writer walks among us” Patti Smith
“A truly great writer steps onto the stage” Daniel Kehlmann
“Propulsive, twisting and spell-binding. Lazar is a bold, intricate accomplishment” Lucy Steeds
The snow of the dying century still lay on the edge of the dark forest when Lajos von Lazar, 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 Lazar 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 Lazars 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, Lazar 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
Publisher Review
An astonishing book – a multi-generational family story filled with deeply original characters and gripping scenes, at times realistic, at times disturbingly dreamlike. This novel would be an event in any case. But the fact that its author has only just reached adulthood turns its publication into a thunderclap. A truly great writer steps onto the stage, in full possession of his powers — Daniel Kehlmann The new magician . . . A magnificent novel . . . The splendour and misery of an entire era * Die Zeit * A first-class page-turner . . . the most astonishing discovery of the season * Suddeutsche Zeitung *
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