Oliver VII

Oliver VII PDF Author: Antal Szerb
Publisher: Pushkin Press
ISBN: 1906548536
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 209

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Book Description
The restless King Oliver VII of Alturia, an obscure Central European state whose only notable exports are wine and sardines, wants nothing more than an easy life: so, plotting a coup against himself, King Oliver VII escapes to Venice in search of ‘real’ experience. There he falls in with a team of con-men and ends up, to his own surprise, impersonating himself. His journey through successive levels of illusion and reality teaches him much about the world, about his own nature and the paradoxes of the human condition. Szerb offered Oliver VII as a translation from a non-existent English writer, A H Redcliff — typical Szerb humor, or a reflection of the fact that as a ‘rootless cosmopolitan’ his own work was banned by the Nazi regime?

Oliver VII

Oliver VII PDF Author: Antal Szerb
Publisher: Pushkin Press
ISBN: 1906548536
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 209

Get Book Here

Book Description
The restless King Oliver VII of Alturia, an obscure Central European state whose only notable exports are wine and sardines, wants nothing more than an easy life: so, plotting a coup against himself, King Oliver VII escapes to Venice in search of ‘real’ experience. There he falls in with a team of con-men and ends up, to his own surprise, impersonating himself. His journey through successive levels of illusion and reality teaches him much about the world, about his own nature and the paradoxes of the human condition. Szerb offered Oliver VII as a translation from a non-existent English writer, A H Redcliff — typical Szerb humor, or a reflection of the fact that as a ‘rootless cosmopolitan’ his own work was banned by the Nazi regime?

Oliver Vii (Pushkin Collection)

Oliver Vii (Pushkin Collection) PDF Author: Antal Szerb
Publisher: Pushkin Collection
ISBN: 1908968397
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 209

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Book Description
A comic fable from one of the masters of twentieth-century prose

The Pendragon Legend

The Pendragon Legend PDF Author: Antal Szerb
Publisher: Pushkin Press Classics
ISBN: 1805330667
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 241

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Book Description
While visiting a Welsh castle, a young scholar finds himself at the center of occult rituals and a murder mystery in this “absolute treat” of a gothic detective story (The Guardian) At an end-of-the London season soiree, the young Hungarian scholar-dilettante Janos Batky is introduced to the Earl of Gwynedd, a reclusive eccentric who is the subject of strange rumors. Invited to the family seat, Pendragon Castle in North Wales, Batky receives a mysterious phone-call warning him not to go. But go he does, plunging him into a bizarre world of mysticism and romance, animal experimentation, and planned murder. His quest to solve the central mystery takes him down strange byways-old libraries and warehouse cellars, Welsh mountains and underground tombs. The Pendragon Legend is Antal Szerb's first novel and is a gently satirical blend of gothic and romantic genres, crossed with the murder mystery format to produce a fast-moving and often hilarious romp. But beneath the surface, the reader becomes aware of a steely intelligence probing moral, psychological, and religious questions.

Journey by Moonlight

Journey by Moonlight PDF Author: Antal Szerb
Publisher: Pushkin Press
ISBN: 1906548501
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 298

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Book Description
'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' Guardian A major modern classic: the turbulent story of a businessman torn between middle-class respectability and sensational bohemoia Mihály and Erzsi are on honeymoon in Italy. Mihály has recently joined the respectable family firm in Budapest, but as his gaze passes over the mysterious back-alleys of Venice, memories of his bohemian past reawaken his old desire to wander. When bride and groom become separated at a provincial train station, Mihály embarks on a chaotic and bizarre journey that leads him finally to Rome, where he must reckon with both his past and his future. In this intoxicating and satirical masterpiece, Szerb takes us deep into the conflicting desires of marriage and shows how adulthood can reverberate endlessly with the ache of youth. Part of the Pushkin Press Classics series: timeless storytelling by icons of literature, hand-picked from around the globe Translated by Len Rix Antal Szerb was born in Budapest in 1901. 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.

The Queen's Necklace

The Queen's Necklace PDF Author: Antal Szerb
Publisher: Pushkin Press
ISBN: 1908968788
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 317

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Book Description
"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.

The Third Tower

The Third Tower PDF Author: Antal Szerb
Publisher: Pushkin Press
ISBN: 1782270922
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 80

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Book Description
A typically brilliant, ironic and moving travelogue by one of the twentieth century's greatest writers In August 1936 a Hungarian writer in his mid-thirties arrives by train in Venice, on a journey overshadowed by the coming war and charged with intense personal nostalgia. Aware that he might never again visit this land whose sites and scenes had once exercised a strange and terrifying power over his imagination, he immerses himself in a stream of discoveries, reappraisals and inevitable self-revelations. From Venice, he traces the route taken by the Germanic invaders of old down to Ravenna, to stand, fulfilling a lifelong dream, before the sacred mosaics of San Vitale. This journey into his private past brings Antal Szerb firmly, and at times painfully, up against an explosive present, producing some memorable observations on the social wonders and existential horrors of Mussolini's new Roman Imperium. 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.

Novels, Tales, Journeys

Novels, Tales, Journeys PDF Author: Alexander Pushkin
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0307959635
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 512

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Book Description
From the award-winning translators: the complete prose narratives of the most acclaimed Russian writer of the Romantic era and one of the world's greatest storytellers. The father of Russian literature, Pushkin is beloved not only for his poetry but also for his brilliant stories, which range from dramatic tales of love, obsession, and betrayal to dark fables and sparkling comic masterpieces, from satirical epistolary tales and romantic adventures in the manner of Sir Walter Scott to imaginative historical fiction and the haunting dreamworld of "The Queen of Spades." The five short stories of The Late Tales of Ivan Petrovich Belkin are lightly humorous and yet reveal astonishing human depths, and his short novel, The Captain's Daughter, has been called the most perfect book in Russian literature.

Parrot and Olivier in America

Parrot and Olivier in America PDF Author: Peter Carey
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0307593010
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 401

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Book Description
Parrot and Olivier in America has been shortlisted for the 2010 Man Booker Prize. From the two-time Booker Prize–winning author comes an irrepressibly funny new novel set in early nineteenth-century America. Olivier—an improvisation on the life of Alexis de Tocqueville—is the traumatized child of aristocratic survivors of the French Revolution. Parrot is the motherless son of an itinerant English printer. They are born on different sides of history, but their lives will be connected by an enigmatic one-armed marquis. When Olivier sets sail for the nascent United States—ostensibly to make a study of the penal system, but more precisely to save his neck from one more revolution—Parrot will be there, too: as spy for the marquis, and as protector, foe, and foil for Olivier. As the narrative shifts between the perspectives of Parrot and Olivier, between their picaresque adventures apart and together—in love and politics, prisons and finance, homelands and brave new lands—a most unlikely friendship begins to take hold. And with their story, Peter Carey explores the experiment of American democracy with dazzling inventiveness and with all the richness and surprise of characterization, imagery, and language that we have come to expect from this superlative writer.

Russian Magic Tales from Pushkin to Platonov

Russian Magic Tales from Pushkin to Platonov PDF Author:
Publisher: Penguin UK
ISBN: 0141392541
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 498

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Book Description
'She turned into a frog, into a lizard, into all kinds of other reptiles and then into a spindle' In these tales, young women go on long and difficult quests, wicked stepmothers turn children into geese and tsars ask dangerous riddles, with help or hindrance from magical dolls, cannibal witches, talking skulls, stolen wives, and brothers disguised as wise birds. Half the tales here are true oral tales, collected by folklorists during the last two centuries, while the others are reworkings of oral tales by four great Russian writers: Alexander Pushkin, Nadezhda Teffi, Pavel Bazhov and Andrey Platonov. In his introduction to these new translations, Robert Chandler writes about the primitive magic inherent in these tales and the taboos around them, while in the afterword, Sibelan Forrester discusses the witch Baba Yaga. This edition also includes an appendix, bibliography and notes. Translated by Robert Chandler and Elizabeth Chandler With Sibelan Forrester, Anna Gunin and Olga Meerson

On the Blue Comet

On the Blue Comet PDF Author: Rosemary Wells
Publisher: Candlewick Press
ISBN: 076363722X
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 336

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Book Description
Losing his family home and beloved model train set during the Great Depression, 11-year-old Oscar is forced to move in with difficult relatives before meeting an enigmatic drifter and witnessing an incredible crime that prompts his cross-country, celebrity-marked train journey. By the award-winning creator of the Max and Ruby series. 50,000 first printing.