Antal Szerb is one of the great European writers'Ali Smith'A novel to love as well as admire,always playful and ironical,full of brilliant descriptions,bon mots and absurd situations'GuardianA major modern classic: the turbulent story of a businessman torn between middle-class respectability and sensational bohemoiaMihály and Erzsi are on honeymoon in Italy. Mihály has recently joined the respectable family firm in Budapest,but as his gaze passes over the mysterious back-alleys of Venice,memories of his bohemian past reawaken his old desire to wander.When bride and groom become separated at a provincial train station,Mihály embarks on a chaotic and bizarre journey that leads him finally to Rome,where he must reckon with both his past and his future. In this intoxicating and satirical masterpiece,Szerb takes us deep into the conflicting desires of marriage and shows how adulthood can reverberate endlessly with the ache of youth.Part of the Pushkin Press Classics series: timeless storytelling by icons of literature,hand-picked from around the globeTranslated by Len RixAntal Szerb was born in Budapest in 1901. Though of Jewish descent,he was baptised at an early age and remained a lifelong Catholic. He rapidly established himself as a formidable scholar,through studies of Ibsen and Blake and histories of English,Hungarian and world literature. He was a prolific essayist and reviewer,ranging across all the major European languages. Debarred by successive Jewish laws from working in a university,he was subjected to increasing persecution,and finally murdered in a forced labour camp in 1945. Pushkin Press publishes his novels The Pendragon Legend,Oliver VII and his masterpiece Journey by Moonlight,as well as the historical study The Queen's Necklace and Love in a Bottle and Other Stories.
MEDIA REVIEWS
Publisher: Pushkin PressISBN: 9781805330240Dimensions: 198 x 129 mm
MEDIA REVIEWS
A writer of immense subtlety and generosity... Can literary mastery be this quiet-seeming,this hilarious,this kind Antal Szerb is one of the great European writersA novel to love as well as admire,always playful and ironical,full of brilliant descriptions,bon mots and absurd situations... it's a book utterly in love with lifeJust divine...the kind of book that makes you imagine the author has had private access to your own soulThis radiantly funny and intelligent novel... shows its author to be one of the masters of twentieth-century fiction. Len Rix's loving translation of a book that might have remained lost to us deserves special praiseJourney by Moonlight is a burning book,a major bookMay Szerb's entry into our literary pantheon be definitiveSzerb belongs with the master novelists of the 20th century(His) unmistakable masterpiece... an ironic epic in the style... of Thomas Mann's The Magic Mountain... masterfully allegorises the suicidal ideations overtaking the collective psyche of continental Europe
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