The Pendragon Legend
Antal Szerb author Len Rix translator
Format:Paperback
Publisher:Pushkin Press
Published:20th Jun '24
Should be back in stock very soon
"An absolute treat... Szerb is a master novelist, a comedian whose powers transcend time and language" Nicholas Lezard, Guardian At an end-of-season London soirée a young Hungarian scholar, Dr János Bátky, 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, Bátky 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.
May Szerb's entry into our literary pantheon be definitive -- Alberto Manguel * Financial Times *
A writer of immense subtlety and generosity... Can literary mastery be this quiet-seeming, this hilarious, this kind? Antal Szerb is one of the great European writers -- Ali Smith
Szerb is a master novelist whose powers transcend time and language -- Nicholas Lezard * The Guardian *
Szerb was fluent in German and English and greatly interested in unusual religious beliefs. His knowledge of Rosicrucianism and the occult informs this often very funny book, which takes many affectionate potshots at the period's popular fiction. Szerb, who produced a history of English literature, knew his Shakespeare, Blake and Milton, but also the frothier writings of John Buchan, Edgar Wallace and P G Wodehouse -- Paul Bailey * The Independent *
An academic jeu d'esprit.... with teasing pastiches of John Cowper Powys, P. G. Wodehouse... and the early, comic fiction of Aldous Huxley -- Sam Sacks * Wall Street Journal *
ISBN: 9781805330660
Dimensions: unknown
Weight: unknown
272 pages