Lázár by Nelio Biedermann SIGNED

Reserve your signed copy of this title which will be published 26 March 2026

Lázár is a sweeping epic, taking the reader from the beginning of the twentieth century to the Hungarian National Uprising of 1956, following the story of a Noble Hungarian family's journey from aristocratic decadence to impoverishment and flight. The book has all the hallmarks of Maggie O’Farrell’s The Marriage Portrait with great historical scope and characters.

The author, Nelio Biedermann was only 21 years old when he wrote the novel and was the talk of Frankfurt Book Festival last year writing with the assurance of an old master.

"A truly great writer steps onto the stage" Daniel Kehlmann
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