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A startling journey indeed

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In Journey by Moonlight, the Hungarian writer Antal Szerb has produced one of the most memorable novels I have read for some time. When I finished it, I turned back to think about what to write in this review and was immediately drawn back into whichever part of the story I landed in, beguiled by the quality of writing and the narrative pace. Ostensibly about the marriage between Mihály and Erzsi, it would be incorrect to describe this as merely a novel, for it is also a series of statements about existence, relationships and our place in the world. Mihály and Erzsi are newlyweds and we join them on their honeymoon in Venice. We rapidly learn that Mihály is a vague, other-worldly man, who seems barely planted on the earth. Even during the first week of the honeymoon he finds himself one night wandering the back streets of Venice for in a sort of dream, not returning to the hotel until dawn. At one point we read a beautifully ironic and sarcastic letter to Mihály from Erzsi's ex-husband Zoltan, giving him instructions on how to care for Erzsi and perfectly describing Mihály's character: "If I were a woman, and had to choose between the two of us, I too would have chosen you without hesitiation and Erzi surely loves you for being just the sort of person you are - so utterly withdrawn and abstracted that you haven no real relationship with anybody or anything, like someone from another planet, a Martian on earth, someone who never really notices anything, . . . who never pays proper attention when others speak, who often seems to act out of vague goodwill and politeness as if playing at being human" Erzsi soon realises that her marriage is based on the fiction that the two understand each other perfectly. However when Erzi starts to explain himself, the more confusing he becomes because he holds secrets even from himself, and fails to understand that people other than himself also have an inner life. The marriage is not going to last! But the way it soon ends is uniquely strange, and perhaps shows the shallowness of its foundations from the start. The story then divides, following the courses of both Mihály and Erzsi as they go their separate ways. Erszi goes to Paris and lives with a girl-friend, meeting up again with Zoltan and various other unique characters. At one point she seems to be offered up to a wealthy Persian as part of a business transaction but manages to assert herself sufficiently to extricate herself and make her own choices after the disastrous second marriage. Mihály on the other hand continues journeying through Italy, having a series of misfortunes along the way which reveal much about the flaws in his character. An other-worldly but self-regarding and self-indulgent personality, but also self-deceiving, with high ideals which he drops at the merest hint of inconvenience to himself. It is the energetic writing style which marks this book out as special. The narrative pace is fast, but it is the insights into human existence along the way which make it sparkle. Antal Szerb has no illusions about his characters for all are deeply flawed. Antal Szerb is a new discovery to me but one of the most valuable. No doubt my enjoyment of this book owes much to the excellent translation by Len Rix and his Afterword sets the book in a wider context and I am pleased to see that he agrees that irony, distinctively Middle-European in character operates on every level of this sophisticated and remarkable novel. Although Mihály's actions are reprehensible, somehow our sympathies are never quite alienated - "some principle at the core of his being calls to us".

Wholly involving

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Mihály, the central character of this elegant and stylish novel (beautifully translated by Len Rix) seems to belong to the early continental 19th century rather than to inter-war Budapest. He is a man in his late thirties, a neurotic and Romantic character, unworldly, more at home in history than in the present, ill at ease in his bourgeois setting at home and equally ill at ease about being in his late thirties. He has a great nostalgia for the time when, as an adolescent schoolboy, he was the hanger-on of a group of unconventional young people: Tamás (who several times tried to commit suicide and eventually managed it); his sister Eva (whom Mihály adored); Ervin (another of Eva's admirers, a convert to Catholicism from Judaism); and János, a suave trickster. The book opens twenty years later, when Mihály is on his honeymoon in Venice with his wife Erszi. Erszi had left her first husband to marry Mihály because he was `different'; he had seduced and then married her because he was trying to be `normal'. But she did not understand just how `different' he was, and he could not cope with marriage; and, besides, he is haunted by the memory of the now mysterious Eva. During a stop-over on a railway journey, Mihály makes the Freudian error of getting onto one train while Erszi is travelling on another. He is relieved to be on his own and that noone can find him. He travels from one Italian location to another - all beautifully and sometimes hauntingly described. I must not reveal the many strange, mysterious and coincidental events that happen to him; but in any case his thought processes are at least as central to the story as are the various events. Meanwhile Erszi, unable to face her family in Budapest as a deserted wife, makes her way to Paris. There she, too, in her own way, turns against the respectable bourgeois life she has hitherto been leading. Again I must not elaborate; but the story is full of fascinating psychological twists and turns (though one of them, in an ancient chateau on a rainy night, does, I must admit, strike me as uncharacteristically grotesque and over the top - quite out of tune with the delicacy of the rest of the novel.) The note of death is heard throughout the novel. As a youngster Mihály had to take part in the theatricals staged by Tamás and Eva which invariably involved death, with Mihály willingly playing the sacrificial victim. Later, there are suicides, cemeteries, Etruscan sarcophagi and the apparent Etruscan notion that "dying is an erotic art", which so resonates with Mihály and had done so for Tamás. Mihály hears a remarkable lecture on that subject from Professor Waldheim, one of his former class-mates whom he meets in Rome - and from that moment onwards Szerb plays some extraordinary games with his readers. A subtle, rich and wonderful book.

A beautiful novel of discovery and escape from the world

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This is one of the most absorbing books I have read this year - there was no way I could put it down until I got to the end of it. Peopled with unforgettable characters like every one of us, this is a tale of love, death, individuality, courage, and conforming. The main characters are on a honeymoon trip in Rome, where they talk about their past lives and the people that affected them. There comes a point where the past and present meet, when it is not possible for love or life to continue; each character must make a choice to decide his or her own fate. The language is beautiful and the whole novel has eerie, Gothic undertones as we follow characters to their death, to isolated houses and mountains where they make an attempt to escape from a common, ordinary world. The language flows beautifully and makes you think about your own life as if you were being swept along by a stream of wisdom. This was wonderful, touching and self-reflective...highly recommended.

a hidden classic..	Customer Rating:
having just finished this masterpiece of a novel, i am truly surprised that i had not heard of it before seeing it in my local charity shop. this beautiful story of a man not able to let go of his childhood captivated me and i couldn't put it down until i'd finished. i'd just love to learn hungarian so i could read the original and see whether it's even better!

Simply magical

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With a subtle wit that allows the reader to be amused at the pretensions and foibles of the characters without making them unsympathetic or into just cyphers, Szerb tells the story of Mihaly and Erzsi and how their honeymoon unfolds. The novel is largely set in Italy and France, with flashbacks to the earlier life of Mihaly in Hungary which build into the picture of his character. Journey by Moonlight is supposed to be a classic of Hungarian literature and I found that easy to understand from the English Translation by Len Rix. This novel and author deserve to be much more widely known. The actual physical production of this volume by Pushkin Press is impressive with a sewn binding and very high quality paper used.