'Antal Szerb is one of the great European writers' Ali Smith'A novel to love as well as admire, always playful and ironical, full of brilliant descriptions, bon mots and absurd situations' GuardianA major modern classic: the turbulent story of a businessman torn between middle-class respectability and sensational bohemoiaMihály and Erzsi are on honeymoon in Italy. Mihály has recently joined the respectable ...

"Szerb belongs with the master novelists of the twentieth century" Paul Bailey, Daily TelegraphThe bored young ruler of an idyllic Central European country plots a coup against himself and escapes to Venice in search of 'real' experience. There he falls in with a team of ambitious con-men and ends up, to his own surprise, impersonating himself.In this wonderfully droll tale the king's journey through successive levels of illusion and reality teaches him much about ...

A witty and erudite love letter to a bygone age, from one of Europe's last great humanists. In August 1785 Paris buzzed with scandal. It involved an eminent churchman, a notorious charlatan, a female fraudster, a part-time prostitute and the hated Queen herself. At its heart was the most expensive diamond necklace ever assembled and the web of fraud, folly and self-delusion it had inspired. In Szerb's last major work, a witty and often surprising account of events, the story is used as a s...

"An absolute treat... Szerb is a master novelist, a comedian whose powers transcend time and language" Nicholas Lezard, GuardianAt 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...

Hungarian Antal Szerb is best known in the West as the author of three extraordinary novels, most notably Journey by Moonlight (1937), and a highly entertaining study of the Ancient Regime in France: The Queen's Necklace (1942). This selection of his stories and novellas, set variously in mythical times and in the London and Paris of the twenties and thirties, reflects his love of life and the irrepressible irony that is his trademark.

**'A dark domestic fairy tale' New York TimesA young writer employs a housekeeper - and slowly finds herself the sole keeper of the older woman's sercrets.**Magda is a writer, Emerence her housekeeper. Magda is new to their quiet Hungarian town, while Emerence, fierce and enigmatic, knows and is known by all. Though Emerence enters Magda’s home whenever she pleases, the door to Emerence’s own strange abode remains barred. Still, somehow, over the course of twenty y...

A teenage girl's difficult journey towards adulthood in a time of war."A school story for grownups that is also about our inability or refusal to protect children from history" SARAH MOSS"Of all Szabo's novels, Abigail deserves the widest readership. It's an adventure story, brilliantly written" TIBOR FISCHEROf all her novels, Magda Szabó's Abigail is indeed the most widely read in her native Hunga...

Enthralling stories from the celebrated author of The Transylvanian Trilogy 'A great storyteller' Guardian Back from Troy, the 'divine' Helen looks with fresh eyes at her foul-mouthed hero-husband; a girl in a mountain village seeks reassurance about her arranged marriage; a drunken mandarin invites the devil to tea; and a German princess discovers that people actually drink goat's milk. These delightful tales exhibit Bánffy's customary blend of high seriousness and subtle humour, his rich...

"One of Hungary's most important twentieth-century writers" New York Times"Magda Szabó's fiction shows the travails of modern Hungarian history from oblique but sharply illuminating angles" EconomistEszter Encsy is an acclaimed actress, funny and outrageous, quick-witted but callous. Yet even flushed with the success of adulthood, Eszter craves acceptance of herself as she really is and of the person she has been.T...

** NOW SHORTLISTED FOR THE WARWICK WOMEN IN TRANSLATION PRIZE 2019 **** WINNER OF THE 2018 PEN TRANSLATION PRIZE **BY THE AUTHOR OF THE DOOR, ONE OF THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW'S TEN BEST BOOKS OF 2015"Extraordinary" New York Times"Quite unforgettable" Daily Telegraph"Unusual, piercing . . . oddly percipient" Irish T...

A major classic of 1930s literature, Antal Szerb's Journey by Moonlight 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 Erszi, he soon abandon his new wife in order to find himself, haunted by old friends from his turbulent teena...

**Brought to you by Penguin.Another undisclosed facet of her million secrets glittered before us...**Emerence is a domestic servant – strong, fierce, eccentric, and with a reputation for being a first-rate housekeeper. When Magda, a young Hungarian writer, takes her on to help around the house, she never imagines that this will ignite one of the most important relationships of her life.It takes twenty years for a complex trust between the two women to be slowly, car...