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Journey by Moonlight
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Wikipedia article
'Journey by Moonlight' (, literally "Traveler and Moonlight") is among the best-known novels in contemporary Hungarian literature. Written by Antal Szerb, it was first published in 1937. According to Nicholas Lezard, it is "one of the greatest works of modern European literature...I can't remember the last time I did this: finished a novel and then turned straight back to page one to start it over again. That is, until I read 'Journey by Moonlight'."
Plot introduction
The novel follows Mihly, a Budapest native from a bourgeois family on his honeymoon in Italy as he encounters and attempts to make sense of his past. The novel features his romantic figure, aloof and poetic, but struggling to break with an adolescent rebelliousness which he tries to quell under respectable bourgeois conformism, but also with the disturbing attraction of an erotic death-wish.
Some of the neurotic episodes that Mihly experiences throughout the story have been understood as motifs related to Freudian psychoanalysis, which had been especially influential at the time in Hungary.
Characters in "Journey by Moonlight"
*Mihly a native resident of Budapest
*Erzsi his wife
*Jnos Szepetneki, Ervin, Tams and va Ulpius: Mihly's old friends
*Zoltn Pataki: Erzsi's first husband
Release details
*1937, Hungary, Rvai ISBN ?, Pub date ? ? 1937, paperback (Hungarian first edition)
*1994, New York, USA, Pski-Corvin Books,, Library of Congress Number 93-84996, Pub date 1994, paperback (as "[https://books.google.com/books?id=yMSjQgAACAAJ&dq=editions:ISBN0595278787 The Traveler]", translated by Peter Hargitai (this novel's first English edition)
*2001, London, Pushkin Press , Pub date 1 May 2001, paperback (as "Journey by Moonlight", by Len Rix (this translation's second edition)
*2003, USA, Authors Choice Press, , hardcover, as "The Traveler", translated by Peter Hargitai
*2006, London, Pushkin Press , Pub date 27 February 2006, paperback (as "Journey by Moonlight")
*2012, Zagreb, Croatia, , published in 2012 by Naklada OceanMore, paperback (as "Putnik i mjeseina" / "Traveler and Moonlight" Croatian first edition)
Beside English, the novel has been translated into German, French, Italian, Slovene, Spanish, Dutch, Swedish and Croatian.
References
See also
*Jacob Sager Weinstein
*Antal Szerb
Category:1937 novels
Category:Hungarian novels
Category:Novels set in Italy
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