A short life of the author
Stephen Vizinczey (13 May 1933 – 2 October 2021) was a Hungarian-born Canadian writer and literary critic whose novel In Praise of Older Women: The Amorous Recollections of Andras Vajda (1965) — self-published in Toronto after rejection by every major publisher — became an international bestseller and one of the most celebrated European picaresque novels of the postwar period: a witty, intelligent, sensually detailed account of a young Hungarian man’s erotic education through affairs with women older than himself.
Life
Vizinczey was born in Káloz, Hungary. He participated in the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 as a young man — an experience that shaped his lifelong contempt for political tyranny and intellectual cowardice — and fled to Canada after the Soviet invasion crushed the uprising. He settled in Toronto, worked as a journalist and broadcaster for the CBC, and wrote scripts for the National Film Board of Canada.
When he completed In Praise of Older Women, every major publisher in Canada and the United States rejected it. Vizinczey mortgaged his house, borrowed money from friends, and published the novel himself — creating his own imprint, Contemporary Canada Press, to do so. The gamble paid off: the book was reviewed enthusiastically, sold out immediately, and was picked up by major publishers for international distribution. It has been translated into over twenty languages and has sold millions of copies worldwide.
After the novel’s success, Vizinczey moved to London, where he lived for the remainder of his life and established himself as one of the most incisive and combative literary critics writing in English.
In Praise of Older Women (1965)
The novel follows Andras Vajda from wartime Hungary through university in Budapest and emigration to Canada, tracing his sexual and emotional development through a series of relationships with older women — a philosophy professor’s wife, a resistance fighter, a diplomat’s spouse, an Italian divorcée. The book’s originality lies in its perspective: Vajda’s lovers are not objects of pity or predation but fully realised, intelligent, sexually autonomous women whose experience and confidence are presented as virtues rather than liabilities.
The novel is comic, observant, and psychologically acute. It treats sex with a frankness and specificity that was daring in 1965 — the book was initially banned in some Canadian provinces — but its real subject is the education of sensibility: how a naive young man learns from older, more experienced women to understand desire, intimacy, and the emotional complexity of adult life.
The 1978 Canadian film adaptation, starring Tom Berenger and Karen Black, was less successful than the novel.
An Innocent Millionaire (1983)
Vizinczey’s second novel — published after an eighteen-year gap — tells the story of Mark Niven, a young man who discovers a treasure of Spanish gold off the coast of Florida and then must navigate the corrupt world of lawyers, con artists, and legal systems that conspire to strip him of his fortune. The novel is a satire on American capitalism, legal corruption, and the fundamental incompatibility between innocence and wealth. It was well reviewed but did not replicate the success of In Praise of Older Women.
Truth and Lies in Literature (1986)
Vizinczey’s collection of literary essays is a passionate, opinionated, frequently brilliant defence of the novel as a medium for moral truth. He writes about Stendhal (his literary hero), Balzac, Tolstoy, and Kleist with a fervour and specificity that most contemporary criticism lacks, and attacks contemporary literary fashions — particularly what he sees as the academicisation and politicisation of literary judgment — with characteristic ferocity.
Collecting Vizinczey
In Praise of Older Women (1965, Contemporary Canada Press, Toronto) in the self-published first edition is a genuine rarity — only a few thousand copies were printed — and brings $200–$1,000. Subsequent editions (Ballantine, McArthur & Company) are common. An Innocent Millionaire (1983, Atlantic Monthly Press) brings $20–$50. Signed copies are scarce.