Swiss author Nelio Biedermann is all of 22, and his second novel, Lázár, is already one of the most talked-about works in literary circles across Europe and the Anglophone world. Originally written in German and now translated into 31 languages, it is a gothic family saga infused with magic realism, spanning three generations of Hungarian nobility against the backdrop of increasingly fraught 20th-century world events: the absorption of Ukraine into the Soviet Union, the rise of Hitler, the Holocaust, the Death Marches, the two World Wars, and the Hungarian Uprising in 1956. At 21, critics were already comparing him to Thomas Mann, what is all the more remarkable is that he began writing the novel at age 16, drawing on his own family history, including silences he is still trying to decipher. He spoke to The Indian Express from his home in Zurich over a video call. Edited excerpts: You descend from Hungarian nobility, much like the protagonists of Lázár . How much of the novel is drawn from your own family?…