of illness several years after Emerence comes to work for him and Magda. He tolerates, but does not get along with Emerence. Emerence: Magda's housekeeper who works on her own terms. Although ageing, Emerence is a strong and driven personality, and has been fiercely independent since her unfortunate childhood in rural Hungary. Emerence takes care of Magda's house and the streets of the neighbourhood with a vitality that is almost superhuman. Viola: A dog that Magda found as a frail puppy buried in the snow one Christmas Day. Magda takes him in but Emerence becomes his master; Emerence and Viola enjoy a special connection that Magda is unable to understand or be part of. Adélka: An elderly widowed pensioner, one of Emerence's three female friends who she entertains on the porch of her house. Polett (formerly Paulette): An impoverished elderly friend of Emerence. Polett now lives alone and in poverty but was previously employed as a French governess. She is the second of Emerence's trio of older female friends. Sutu: An elderly female fruit and vegetable seller, the third of Emerence's close friends. "Józsi's boy": The son of Emerence's brother, her sole living relative she still has a good relationship with the Lieutenant Colonel: Emerence's friend and a lieutenant colonel in the police force. He and Magda shoulder the burden of responsibility for Emerence. Eva Grossman: the baby daughter of the Jewish family whose home Emerence took care of before they fled the country, leaving behind little Eva in the care of Emerence. Grown up, Eva lives in the United States when the story takes place. Autobiographical content Although the work cannot be taken autobiographically, there are many similarities between the life of the author Magda and the narrator, Magda. As the back of the New York Review of Books publication of the novel writes, "Magda is a writer, educated, married to an academic, public-spirited, with an on-again-off-again relationship to Hungary's Communist authorities". The author, Magda Szabó, was also an educated writer and married to an academic, the Hungarian translator Tibor Szobotka. Events from the book such as Magda being sent to Greece as part of the Hungarian delegation for a literary conference could easily have been taken from the life of the author, and the award that the character Magda receives from the Hungarian Parliament in the story could be easily exchanged with one of the many awards that