"A compensatory collection of legendary Hungarian women." - Anna Karády

"Women who made the world more beautiful and better." - Eva Priest

"You are a sharp light in the shadows, and an elegant shadow in the light..." Miklós Radnóti wrote to his wife, Fanni Gyarmati, in the poem addressed to her. The woman, who was not only her companion, but also her spiritual partner - and who later, until the end of her life, bore the burdens that fell upon the poet after his death and took care of his legacy and memory.

There have been many women in Hungarian history who were not defined by a man, but who tried or were able to be who they wanted in their own right. Even in times when it was not easy and self-evident.

Women most people don't even know existed.

Because do we know that the mother of our King Louis I (the Great), Elizabeth Łokietek, was her son's co-ruler until the end of her life? How could Mátyás never have been king without the support of his mother, Erzsébet Szilágyi? How did Ferenc Kazinczy's wife Sophie Török "launch" the modern Hungarian literary life? That Júlia Szendrey was a talented writer-poet and did not "throw away the widow's veil" out of calculation? That one of Sándor Weöres' best-known children's poems is not a children's poem, but a love poem, which he wrote for Alaine Polcz, the psychologist who launched the Hungarian hospice movement?

The reader is holding a copy of Tibor Soós's highly successful picture book From Shadows to Light. The story of Hungarian women who, like their international counterparts, did not want to live within the framework defined by men, but wanted to go their own way. Some succeeded, some did not. There were those who were recognized only by posterity. However, their fate is exemplary for today's women - and men - as well.