It is one of those phenomena that occur, at most, once or twice a decade: a novel emerging from nowhere turns an unknown twenty-something into a literary star. This is how the story of Nelio Biedermann begins, a Swiss author born in 2003 whom Lázár, a historical saga written with the breath of a disciple of Thomas Mann, has catapulted to fame. Published in German-speaking countries in September 2025, the novel surpassed 200,000 copies and sold its translation rights to about thirty territories. Patti Smith praised it publicly and Dua Lipa recommended it to her followers, while Tom Tykwer, director of Run Lola Run and the series Babylon Berlin, is already preparing its film adaptation. The book arrives this Thursday in Spanish bookstores, published by Salamandra.
Not bad for an author who is still studying literature and film at the University of Zurich, and continues sharing an apartment with his sister and a friend in Seefeld, an elegant neighborhood on the lakeshore overlooking the city, where he met us at the end of July. His father runs the travel agency located on the ground floor of the building. “Sorry for not making you come up, but my sister is sick,” he says as he rings the bell. A few minutes later, a young man with a thin mustache, casual attire, and a chain around his neck appears, somewhat perplexed and overwhelmed by everything that has happened. “So many things have happened that it seems like the book has been published for three years, but it hasn’t even been one. Although, in reality, my personal life hasn’t changed that much,” he assures on the sunny terrace of the corner café.
Actually, Biedermann was not a novice. In 2023 he had already published a first novel, trained himself by devotedly reading the classics, and found inspiration for Lázár in a subject he knew since childhood: the Hungarian memory from the paternal branch of his family. His elders used to take him on vacations to Hungary to show him the castles that had belonged to them. Those visits left a mark: a wounded family pride, but also the silence about the darkest episodes of the 20th century — the inevitable question in that corner of Europe: what did your grandparents do during the war — and the impression that a trauma was transmitted from one generation to the next. “There are specific family stories in the novel, but when I finished it was hard to know where those real stories ended and where the invented ones began. I started from memories and family stories, but when turning them into fiction something with a life of its own emerged. My grandmother’s stories and those in the book are similar, but not exactly the same,” he says.
“History books are essential, but not enough. We understand that something terrible happened without really feeling it. The novel can create empathy for concrete lives”
The novel follows the Lázár family for almost 300 pages, a noble lineage that goes through the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the two world wars, the Nazi occupation, and Stalinism, until facing exile in the 1950s. As in The Buddenbrooks, Mann’s monumental saga, the grand history blends with the family one, although here it is crossed by a gothic vein and another that seems related to magical realism. Lajos is born on Epiphany with almost transparent skin, under which his organs can be seen. He is a child with aquamarine blue eyes, son of Baroness Mária and, although he will never know it, one of her servants. The secret is locked in a castle next to a forest that drives those who enter it mad. His children, Pista and Eva, will inherit his surname, but also the silences, violence, and losses of the family. After the failure of the Hungarian uprising against Soviet rule, they must decide whether to stay in Budapest or escape through Yugoslavia to try to reach Switzerland.
The question is whether a historical saga of this kind, a very unusual artifact among writers of his generation, was conceived against certain literary trends, at a time dominated by autofiction and other forms of testimony. Biedermann assures he did not write against any current. It all started from a reading list imposed by a professor during his studies: more than a hundred titles ranging from Goethe and Schiller to Peter Handke or Patrick Süskind. “I wanted to understand why many of those books still had so much influence, why they remained alive and what they could still tell us today,” he states.
From those readings he gave birth to an overflowing and somewhat uneven novel, whose narrative advances in fits and starts and tends toward a saturation of misfortunes, as some critics have pointed out. Biedermann even allows himself to leave the Lázár family for a few pages to narrate Stalin’s last hours, who agonizes with a book by Gogol beside him. Although these ups and downs do not hide the grand ambition of the project, his talent for literary imagery, and an uncommon sensitivity. The author admits he feared loading the book with suffering but ended up rejecting the idea of sparing the reader discomfort: “Those generations had to live it. We only have to read it.”
In his own family, the stories came with silenced fragments: his grandmother usually omitted all the traumatic episodes. Much later he discovered dark corners and learned that his grandfather, whom he never met, had suffered a severe depression. “In the midst of that silence, pride and a sense of belonging were transmitted, but also fear and ways of causing harm,” he states. Writing does not guarantee that the cycle is broken, but it forces one to observe what was previously out of frame. “I don’t know if writing is enough; I don’t have that much faith in literature,” Biedermann jokes. “But it does help to become aware of what went wrong, and that is something.” Fiction, the writer adds, can achieve something that a specialist’s essay alone cannot: “History books are essential, but not enough. We intellectually understand that something terrible happened without really feeling it. The novel can create empathy for concrete lives.”
Throughout the book, the Lázár family struggles between two forms of survival: madness and oblivion. Imre, Pista and Eva’s great-uncle, spends much of his life confined in a sanatorium: going mad seems the logical response to a world that has lost reason. Meanwhile, Lajos, his nephew and head of the family, keeps his sanity, but only through self-deception. “I wonder how those who lived through that part of the 20th century could remain sane. Although the human being has an extraordinary capacity for adaptation: something intolerable can happen that, over time, becomes the new normal. Forgetting is an understandable way to cope with History,” the author opines.
One of Lázár’s greatest virtues is its refusal to turn its protagonists into victims. The family suffers war, occupation, and communist repression, but arrives at that collapse from a position of wealth and privilege sustained by the work of others, something Biedermann never loses sight of. Lajos, moreover, is not a mere witness of his time: in 1944 he will participate in organizing the persecution and deportation of Jews. “In all families, there is a tendency to tell the good part, the family legend. I knew I had to show the other side,” the author responds. However, he avoids passing judgment: “I prefer to leave the judgment to the reader. Ambiguous characters are more interesting. And, above all, they better reflect our reality.”
He gives only one hint about his next book: it will take place in the present. He will say no more. Biedermann has dedicated this novel to reconstructing everything his family brought with them to this shore of the lake. Perhaps the next step is to find out what remains of their story in the murky present.
Read more Riki Blanco: content and container
