Mrs Kleofas’s Rooster
Three Novellas
Gyula Krúdy author John Batki translator
Format:Paperback
Publisher:Seagull Books London Ltd
Publishing:5th Apr '26
£19.99
This title is due to be published on 5th April, and will be despatched as soon as possible.
A trio of darkly elegant, women-centric novellas from a master of twentieth-century Hungarian literature.
Mrs Kleofas’ Rooster brings together three captivating novellas by Gyula Krúdy, originally written in the 1920s and now available in English for the first time. Each story centers on a woman protagonist: a timeless adventuress, a resilient single mother, and a seductive Budapest femme fatale, respectively. In the title novella, a roguish narrator listens to the thrilling life story of an ageless, mysterious woman whose journey takes her from a childhood of suffering to a career as a cunning accomplice in daring schemes. The next story, NN, follows the life of a steadfast single mother, Juliska, amid the rhythms of village life. In Autumn Meeting, Krudy’s sharp wit unfolds through Rizili, a charming yet ruthless socialite who leads a suspended jockey on an intoxicating night through Budapest’s City Park.
“There is about Krúdy an absolutely railed-down otherworldliness. A brilliant spectrum where reality is just one possible colour . . .” -- Michael Hofmann, The Times Literary Supplement * Praise for Gyula Krúdy *
“Krudy has been compared to his great contemporaries (Marcel Proust, James Joyce, Joseph Roth) and his great successors (Isabel Allende and Gabriel Garcia Marquez). Other comparisons come to mind. His work purrs with the fin-de-siècle urbane eroticism in Arthur Schnitzler’s stories. His shifting viewpoints and streams of consciousness recall Virginia Woolf. Like Kafka, he’s willing to let dream and reality mingle. He’s ironic and wise about the human heart and life’s futility, like Chekhov. . . . The more translations of this untranslatable genius there are, the closer we’ll be to his shimmering, melancholy world.” -- Los Angeles Times * Praise for Gyula Krúdy *
“Krudy writes of imaginary people, of imaginary events, in dream-like settings; but the spiritual essence of his persons and of their places is stunningly real, it reverberates in our minds and strikes at our hearts.” -- The New Yorker * Praise for Gyula Krúdy *
ISBN: 9781803096148
Dimensions: unknown
Weight: 454g
244 pages