"Szerb belongs with the master novelists of the 20th century"
PAUL BAILEY Daily Telegraph
"May Szerb"s entry into our literary pantheon be definitive"
ALBERTO MANGUEL Financial Times
"A writer of immense subtlety and generosity, with an uncommonly light touch which masks its own artistry. His novels transform farce into poetry, comic melancholy into a kind of self-effacing grace. Can literary mastery be this quiet-seeming, this hilarious, this kind? Antal Szerb is one of the great European writers"
ALI SMITH
"Szerb, however, aware that gothic literature had long become its own parody, played his story for laughs. The result is a dark tale of spiritual quest told in the style of the Marx brothers"
ALBERTO MANGUEL Financial Times
"The novel shoots back and forth between London and Wales; and, quite astonishingly, there is not a false note in it. (...) Szerb is a master novelist, a comedian whose powers transcend time and language (again, thanks to Rix for his tender approach to the source material), and a playful, sophisticated intellect. (...) There is so much in this book that it is impossible to summarise, except to say that it is a romp, but one which romps within itself; it has fun with the conventions, and has fun with having fun with them, too. It is an absolute treat, deliciously ludic, to be read with a big smile on your face throughout"
NICHOLAS LEZARD The Guardian
"Szerb was fluent in German and English and greatly interested in unusual religious beliefs. His knowledge of Rosicrucianism and the occult informs this often very funny book, which takes many affectionate potshots at the period's popular fiction. Szerb, who produced a history of English literature, knew his Shakespeare, Blake and Milton, but also the frothier writings of John Buchan, Edgar Wallace and P G Wodehouse"
PAUL BAILEY The Independent
ABOUT THE BOOK
AT THE END-OF-LONDON-SEASON soiree, the young Hungarian scholar-dilettante Janos Batky is introduced to the Earl of Gwynedd, a reclusive eccentric who is the subject of strange rumours. Invited to the family seat, Pendragon Castle in North Wales, Batky receives a mysterious phone-call warning him not to go. But he does, and finds himself in a bizarre world of mysticism and romance, animal experimentation, and planned murder. His quest to solve the central mystery takes him down strange byways-old libraries and warehouse cellars, Welsh mountains and underground tombs. Journey by Moonlight, Szerb's quintessential amalgamation of the romantic, the mystical and the transcendental is a Pushkin Press bestseller.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
ANTAL SZERB was born in 1901 into a cultivated Budapest family of Jewish descent. Graduating in German and English, he rapidly established himself as a prolific scholar, publishing books on drama and poetry, studies of Ibsen and Blake, and histories of English, Hungarian, and world literature. His first novel, The Pendragon Legend, was written in 1934. Journey by Moonlight appeared in 1937, followed in 1943 by The Queen's Necklace and various volumes of novellas. He died in the forced-labour camp at Balf in January 1945.
Translated from the Hungarian by Len Rix
Cover illustration Simon Marsden
ISBN 978 1 901285 89 5
ABOUT THE BOOK
AT THE END-OF-LONDON-SEASON soiree, the young Hungarian scholar-dilettante Janos Batky is introduced to the Earl of Gwynedd, a reclusive eccentric who is the subject of strange rumours. Invited to the family seat, Pendragon Castle in North Wales, Batky receives a mysterious phone-call warning him not to go. But he does, and finds himself in a bizarre world of mysticism and romance, animal experimentation, and planned murder. His quest to solve the central mystery takes him down strange byways-old libraries and warehouse cellars, Welsh mountains and underground tombs. Journey by Moonlight, Szerb's quintessential amalgamation of the romantic, the mystical and the transcendental is a Pushkin Press bestseller.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
ANTAL SZERB was born in 1901 into a cultivated Budapest family of Jewish descent. Graduating in German and English, he rapidly established himself as a prolific scholar, publishing books on drama and poetry, studies of Ibsen and Blake, and histories of English, Hungarian, and world literature. His first novel, The Pendragon Legend, was written in 1934. Journey by Moonlight appeared in 1937, followed in 1943 by The Queen's Necklace and various volumes of novellas. He died in the forced-labour camp at Balf in January 1945.
Translated from the Hungarian by Len Rix
Cover illustration Simon Marsden
ISBN 978 1 901285 89 5
