The Queen's Necklace - Couverture souple

Szerb, Antal

Couverture souple

ISBN 10 : 1908968419 ISBN 13 : 9781908968418

Editeur : Pushkin Press, 2013

Synopsis

A witty and erudite love letter to a bygone age, from one of Europe's last great humanists.

"A sparkling slice of eighteenth-century life" Paul Bailey, Independent

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 standpoint from which to survey the entire age. Written in war-torn Hungary in the early 1940s, it constitutes a remarkable gesture of defiance against the brutal world in which the writer lived and died.

Antal Szerb (1901-1945) was born in Budapest. Though of Jewish descent, he was baptised at an early age and remained a lifelong Catholic. He rapidly established himself as a formidable scholar, through studies of Ibsen and Blake and histories of English, Hungarian and world literature. He was a prolific essayist and reviewer, ranging across all the major European languages. Debarred by successive Jewish laws from working in a university, he was subjected to increasing persecution, and finally murdered in a forced labour camp in 1945. Pushkin Press publishes his novels The Pendragon Legend, Oliver VII and his masterpiece Journey by Moonlight, as well as the historical study The Queen's Necklace and Love in a Bottle and Other Stories.

A propos du livre

À propos des auteurs

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.

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.

Détails de l'édition

• Éditeur: Pushkin Press
• Date d'édition: 2013
• Langue: anglais
• ISBN 10: 1908968419
• ISBN 13: 9781908968418
• Reliure: Broché
• Nombre de pages: 384
• Coordonnées du fabricant: non disponible
• Personne responsable: non disponible