Szabó died on Monday, November 19, aged 90.
Szabó's godson Géza Tasi, Debrecen Mayor Lajos Kósa and Bishop of the Calvinist Church of Hungary Gusztáv Bölcskei paid their respects at the bier Thursday morning.
Representatives of the Debrecen city council and the mayor's office laid wreaths at the bier, followed by students of Debrecen's Calvinist Dóczi Secondary School, which Szabó once attended. Representatives of the Csokonai Theatre paid their tributes in the afternoon.
In accordance with Szabó's will, her remains will be cremated and divided into two parts, with one to be placed next to her mother and father in Debrecen and the other to be placed in Budapest's Farkasréti Cemetery, next to her husband, the writer Tibor Szobotka, who died in 1982.
Szabó's remains will be cremated on Friday and a funeral will take place in Debrecen's Calvinist Cemetery at 11:00 on Saturday. An urn containing the other half of her ashes will be interred in Budapest at 11:00 on December 10.
Szabó was born in Debrecen on October 5, 1917. She graduated from the University of Debrecen as a teacher of Latin and Hungarian. Afterward, she taught in secondary schools in Debrecen and Hódmezővásárhely. Between 1945 and 1949 she was worked in the Ministry of Religion and Education.
She married the writer and translator Tibor Szobotka in 1947.
She began her writing career as a poet, publishing her first book, Lamb, in 1947. This was followed by Back to the human in 1949. In the same year, she was awarded the Baumgarten Prize, which was withdrawn for political reasons. She was fired from the ministry in the same year.
Between 1949 and 1958, Hungary's communist regime did not allow her works to be published, and, as her husband had also lost his job for political reasons, she returned to teaching. During this period, she wrote her first novel, Fresco. The book, which was not published until 1958, met with overwhelming success.
In 1978, Szabó was presented with the Kossuth Prize, Hungary's highest honour for artists.
Szabó's works have been published in more than 40 countries around the world, and she has won numerous prizes in Hungary and abroad. In 2003, she was awarded Frances's Prix Femina Étranger for best foreign novel.
Her novel Abigail was chosen as the 6th most popular novel in the Hungarian version of The Big Read. Three more of her novels made the top hundred in the list: Für Elise, An Old-fashioned Story and The Door.
Source: Hungarian News Agency (MTI)
