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"An absolute treat... Szerb is a master novelist, a comedian whose powers transcend time and language" Nicholas Lezard, GuardianAt an end-of-season London soiree a young Hungarian scholar, Dr 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. Once there, nothing is quite as it seems... Antal Szerb's first novel is a gently satirical blend of gothic and romantic genres, crossed with a murder mystery to produce a fast-moving and often hilarious romp. But beneath the surface, Szerb's steely intelligence poses disturbingly modern questions about the nature of self and reality.
About the author
Len Rix was born in Zimbabwe and now lives in Cambridge. He is the translator of all Szerb's work published in English and his translations have been widely celebrated, earning him the Oxford-Weidenfeld Translation Prize and the PEN Translation Prize.Antal Szerb was born in Budapest in 1901. Best known in the West as a novelist and short story writer, he was also a prolific scholar whose interests ranged widely across the whole field of European literature. Debarred from a university post by reason of his Jewish ancestry, he taught in a commercial secondary school until increasing persecution led to his brutal death in a labour camp, in 1945. Yet the tone of his writing is almost always deceptively light, the fierce intelligence softened by a gentle tolerance, wry humour and understated irony. Pushkin Press's publications of Szerb's work include his novels Journey by Moonlight, Oliver VII and The Pendragon Legend, as well as the short story collection Love in a Bottle and the history The Queen's Necklace.
