Antal Szerb
Paperback | Pages: 299 pages Rating: 4.21 | 4654 Users | 409 Reviews
Details Books In Pursuance Of Journey by Moonlight
| Original Title: | Utas és holdvilág |
| ISBN: | 1901285502 (ISBN13: 9781901285505) |
| Edition Language: | English |
| Characters: | Mihály, Erzsi, János Szepetneki, Zoltán Pataki, Tamás Ulpius, Éva Ulpius |
| Setting: | Italy Rome(Italy) Florence(Italy) …more Venice(Italy) Ravenna(Italy) Siena(Italy) Paris(France) …less |
Representaion To Books Journey by Moonlight
A major classic of 1930s literature, Antal Szerb's Journey by Moonlight (Utas és Holdvilág) is the fantastically moving and darkly funny story of a bourgeois businessman torn between duty and desire. 'On the train, everything seemed fine. The trouble began in Venice ...' Mihály has dreamt of Italy all his life. When he finally travels there on his honeymoon with wife Erszi, he soon abandon her in order to find himself, haunted by old friends from his turbulent teenage days: beautiful, kind Tamas, brash and wicked Janos, and the sexless yet unforgettable Eva. Journeying from Venice to Ravenna, Florence and Rome, Mihály loses himself in Venetian back alleys and in the Tuscan and Umbrian countryside, driven by an irresistible desire to resurrect his lost youth among Hungary's Bright Young Things, and knowing that he must soon decide whether to return to the ambiguous promise of a placid adult life, or allow himself to be seduced into a life of scandalous adventure. Journey by Moonlight (Utas és Holdvilág) is an undoubted masterpiece of Modernist literature, a darkly comic novel cut through by sex and death, which traces the effects of a socially and sexually claustrophobic world on the life of one man. Translated from the Hungarian by the renowned and award-winning Len Rix, Antal Szerb's Journey by Moonlight (first published as Utas és Holdvilág in Hungary in 1937) is the consummate European novel of the inter-war period.Declare Based On Books Journey by Moonlight
| Title | : | Journey by Moonlight |
| Author | : | Antal Szerb |
| Book Format | : | Paperback |
| Book Edition | : | Anniversary Edition |
| Pages | : | Pages: 299 pages |
| Published | : | January 1st 2001 by Pushkin Press (first published 1937) |
| Categories | : | Fiction. European Literature. Hungarian Literature. Cultural. Hungary. Classics. Literature |
Rating Based On Books Journey by Moonlight
Ratings: 4.21 From 4654 Users | 409 ReviewsWrite-Up Based On Books Journey by Moonlight
ON THE TRAIN everything seemed fine. The trouble began in Venice, with the back alleys. This is our introduction to Mihaly a Hungarian businessman on his honeymoon in Venice. Mihaly has married his wife Erzi to escape from an adolescent rebellious nature and into the arms of conformity, part of the problem faced is his newly wed bride has married him as an attempt to escape the bourgeois conformity of her life prior to meeting him. As stated in the opening lines, the trouble began with thoseTo step off. The train. The bus. The world. The marriage. Surely you've thought of it.This is Europe before World War II. But that's not essential to the story. Mussolini is mentioned but he has no moment. It is not that kind of allegory.It is Mihály who steps off, stepping off the train during his honeymoon in Italy. He leaves his new bride Erzsi on the train. It seems an accident when Mihály steps off, but it is no accident. There was a group of friends in Mihály's impressionable years. Of his
Boy, am I ever having a problem finishing books lately! This one has almost grabbed me, and I've made it to within 50 pages of its 230-page end, but I can't help noticing it's been almost grabbing me since I started it, with no increase in my interest since. Granted, it's hard to read when you've just fallen in love, with a woman with three rowdy sons, and moved house 1000kms, and when you're not absorbed in deep conversation or communion or trying to entertain or discipline children can hardly
I don't give out five stars easily, but every once in a while a book comes along that's so good it makes me reassess all those other books I've given five stars to. Truly, if "Journey by Moonlight" is the standard by which all other books should be judged, very few others would receive top marks from me. I had never heard of the Hungarian author Antal Szerb before, nor had I ever heard of this book. It was only back in 2017 when, visiting my brother in Boston, I stepped inside the Harvard
The basic theme is an adult man (hes 36) in love with nostalgia for his youth. He was of a lower class background but hung out with a group of four or five friends in a wealthy neighborhood of Budapest, Castle Hill. The time is between World Wars. They spend all their time play-acting -- years to the point where that became the whole purpose of their lives. Those friends, drinking and smoking with no adult supervision, became so dedicated to each other they became their own family. Even as
This is the sort of book I love...one that you come across somewhere (in this case, a castle library in Italy) and feel sure that it was hiding there all this time, waiting for you to find it. The author is Hungarian, and the novel was originally published in 1937; its English translation appeared in 2000. 'Journey by Moonlight' is unlike any novel I've read: the atmosphere is both dreamy & descriptive, rich in history and detail. The characters are interesting, and the dialogue is
Foied vinom pipafo, cra carefo.A Faliscan saying, meaning "Enjoy the wine today, tomorrow there'll be none." Szerb quotes it twice in this short novel, and it's as good an epigraph as any for Journey by Moonlight's comic melancholy.It took me three tries to get into this novel, but then its sad humorous charm began to work on me and I couldn't put it down. Mostly it's told from the bemused perspective of Mihály, a failed conformist from Budapest who deserts his new wife on their Italian
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