ANXIOUS TO PLEASE his bourgeois father, Mihály has joined the family firm in Budapest. Pursued by nostalgia for his bohemian youth, he seeks escape in marriage to Erzsi, not realising that she has chosen him as a means to her own rebellion. On their honeymoon in Italy Mihály "loses" his bride at a provincial station and embarks on a chaotic and bizarre journey that leads him finally to Rome. There all the death-haunted and erotic elements of his past converge, and he, like Erzsi, has finally to choose.
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, 1934, is set in London and Wales.
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 BY Len Rix
Cover illustration by Luca Pagliari
ISBN (10) 1901285 91 X
ISBN (13) 978 1 901285 50 5
240pp • £6.99 / $12.95
"A great novel...Antal Szerb belongs with the master novelists of the 20th century."
PAUL BAILEY -
Daily Telegraph
A "bewitching romantic, social and travel novel"
Der Spiegel
