![]() ![]() ![]() Though Mihály has resigned himself to a petty bourgeois existence, taking a position in his father’s firm and marrying a sobering and practical woman, he finds himself entranced by the Italian countryside-its aura of historical gravity, its savage beauty, and the offer of madness and magic that its tangle of close, crooked backstreets seems to extend. The masterwork of Antal Szerb, a celebrated Hungarian man of letters who is practically unknown in the English-speaking world, Journey by Moonlight follows a malcontent Hungarian businessman, Mihály, and his new bride, Erzsi, on their honeymoon in Italy. ![]() It is above all strange, a brief reprieve from the logic according to which happiness and sadness are opposed to one another. It is difficult to say whether the book is happy or sad, or both, or neither. This fall Journey by Moonlight, a beloved Hungarian classic first published in 1937, will at last make its American debut. Journey by Moonlightby Antal Szerb, translated by Len Rix (New York Review Books) ![]()
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