The Photographer at Sixteen: The Death and Life of a Fighter

by George Szirtes

A poet's memoir of his mother that flows backwards through time, through a tumultuous period of European history - a tender and yet unsparing autobiographical journey.**RADIO 4's BOOK OF THE WEEK FROM 15 March 2021**"A truly remarkable book . . . fiercely compelling" EDMUND DE WAAL*WINNER OF THE JAMES TAIT BLACK MEMORIAL PRIZE* *SHORTLISTED FOR THE JEWISH WINGATE PRIZE*"I've read no memoir that moved me more" MIRANDA SEYMOUR"The writing is always scrupulous . . . [a] compelling memoir" BLAKE MORRISON"Beautifully written and utterly compelling" Sunday Times"An original, probingly thoughtful memoir" EVA HOFFMANNIn July 1975, George Szirtes' mother, Magda, died in an ambulance, on her way to hospital after attempting to take her own life. She was fifty-one years old. This memoir is an attempt to make sense of what came before, to re-construct who Magda Szirtes really was. The Photographer at Sixteen moves from her death, spooling backwards through her years as a mother, through sickness and exile in England, the family's flight from Hungary in 1956, her time in two concentration camps, her girlhood as an ambitious photographer and her vanished family in Transylvania.The woman who emerges, fleetingly, fragmentarily - with her absolutism, her contradictions, her beauty - is utterly captivating. What were the terrors and obsessions that drove her? The Photographer at Sixteen reveals a life that is at Magda Szirtes from the depths of the end to the comparable safety of the photographer's studio where she first appears as a small child. It is a book born of curiosity, guilt and love.

Genres: Nonfiction, Biography, Biography Memoir

235 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 31, 2019

About the author

George Szirtes was born in Budapest in 1948 and came to England as a refugee in 1956. He was brought up in London and studied Fine Art in London and Leeds. His poems began appearing in national magazines in 1973 and his first book, The Slant Door, was published in 1979. It won the Faber Memorial prize the following year.

By this time he was married with two children. After the publication of his second book, November and May, 1982, he was invited to become a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. Since then he has published several books and won various other prizes including the T S Eliot Prize for Reel in 2005.

Having returned to his birthplace, Budapest, for the first time in 1984, he has also worked extensively as a translator of poems, novels, plays and essays and has won various prizes and awards in this sphere. His own work has been translated into numerous languages.

Beside his work in poetry and translation he has written Exercise of Power, a study of the artist Ana Maria Pacheco, and, together with Penelope Lively, edited New Writing 10 published by Picador in 2001.

George Szirtes lives near Norwich with his wife, the painter Clarissa Upchurch. Together they ran The Starwheel Press. Corvina has recently produced Budapest: Image, Poem, Film, their collaboration in poetry and visual work.

Reviews

[Debbie Robson · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Photographer At Sixteen, is as it says on the cover, a truly remarkable book about identity, image and memory. We know from the back of the book that George Szirtes’s mother died after she had tried to take her own life in 1975, when the ambulance that was carrying her crashed. She was only fifty-one years old but had been subject to ill health for a long time.
In this unusual biography, Szirtes works backwards beginning with not his earliest memories of his mother but his last, explaining:
“Moving backwards may be like healing a wound, returning to a perfect unwounded beginning where all is innocence and potential.”
Of course with World War II looming (in the flight backwards) in Magda Szirtes’s life, it is not hard to imagine some of the things that happened to Magda when we first meet her in the 1970s, very ill - a difficult and demanding woman. “She wanted life, but she wanted it nurturable, captive and devoted.”
It is not an easy thing to do, run a narrative backwards but Szirtes does this admirably by using the subject of the houses his parents lived in and working back that way. The first chapter is entitled The Last House and he starts with his his last memories of his mother there before he left it to get married and earlier his childhood growing up in the house.
“There was a house before the last one but I have little memory of it. She was still working at home some of the time (retouching photos). There was the light-box on the table, a set of photographic oils, some tiny sable brushes and some slivers of razor for scratching out unwanted marks.”
As a poet the author features his mother in many of his poems:
“When she bent over the light-box her face shone
As though she herself had been the source of light,
A moon to a diffuse rectangular sun...”
Gradually we find out how the author’s parents came to leave Hungary and move to London, and earlier what it was like living in Hungary under the socialist republic and then earlier again, to how both Magda and Laszlo survived World War II, particularly as Laszlo, the author’s father was known to be a jew.
When Szirtes reaches the part in his narrative before his birth, the narrative switches to the point of view of Magda herself whenever possible.
“Both father and brother made a mark on Magda, but she was away in Budapest when everyone vanished.
That was shortly after March 19, 1944, just as Laszlo and Magda were enjoying a brief meeting over a coffee in Budapest. That was the day they saw the Germans arrive and knew the world had suddenly changed and darkened.” Compelling.

[Vivienne · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautifully written and engaging. By using family photographs to relate his mother's history (backwards), Szirtes draws us into his family. It's a very poignant book, lyrical and thought-provoking.

[Laura Spira · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a remarkable book. It won the James Tait Black prize for biography in 2020 but it is not the usual sort of biography. In it, the poet George Szirtes tells the story of his mother Magda. But the way he tells it makes it clear that it is *a* story of her, his perception of how she was but far from a definitive description. He tells it backwards, tracing her life back to her childhood, with wonderfully insightful use of photographs which play in important part, as she was a photographer. The role of photographs in constructing and preserving memory runs as a subtle thread throughout the book and the prose has the quality of a photograph, conjuring up vivid images.

In the early part of the book we see Magda the mother and wife through her son's eyes. I found the scenes of his childhood particularly evocative as I was growing up in the same part of London at the same time. Later we see Magda against the backdrop of the twentieth century upheaval in Eastern Europe, altering names, places, nationalities and the sense of identity of individuals as families are torn apart. Szirtes' poems provide a poignant emphasis to his imaginings of her early life.

A compelling read, and a book I shall want to read again.

[Jacquie · Rating 5 out of 5]

The poet remembers his mother and his life with and without her. He tries to fill in the many gaps with the history of the time. It has photographs and he invites us to gaze at them with him. It a book about memory and about what suffering does to us. I found it a compelling and devastating read.

[Malcolm Watson · Rating 4 out of 5]

An incredible story of determination, survival and investigation.
George Szirtes sets out to find the backstory of his mother Magda born in Romania sent to the camps by the Germans whilst in her early twenties, then again uprooted by the Russian invasion of Hungary and transported to England.
The story he discovers is an almost unbelievable tale of survival against the odds but with a terrible price to pay for everyone.

[Allison Kennedy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sumptuously rich and thought provoking

George Szirtes paints a portrait of his mother through his words, and sometimes with actual portraits that bring the subject alive. He honestly tells readers his need to invent memories to give himself something to hold on to, but he does it such a believable and masterful way.

[Ian Swinden · Rating 4 out of 5]

Quite a unique read. The author summons up his mother and her life through a series of photographs. The family history reflects the turmoil in Europe in the first half of the 20th century. The poetry and prose is beautifully written. Thoroughly recommend

[Paul Dickson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Exceptional

[Daisy Evans · Rating 5 out of 5]

thoughtful, very moving, loved the telling of the tale from the present back into the past. Ultimately devastating but also life-affirming. Some trick that.

[Ayesha S. Khan · Rating 3 out of 5]

A rare blend of Autobiography, Biography and world shaping history.

[Jude Brigley · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is simply a marvellous, moving, imaginative book.

[Helen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Rating based on the abridged audiobook narrated by the author.