Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Intriguing, Alluring, Sexy, Dark, November 25, 2004
A classic in Hungarian literature, so I've learned, this work rightly deserves its vaunted status. Deceptive in style, and written almost from a Kafkaesque perspective, one feels as if one is walking in the landscape of "The Castle," but dealing with characters from Donna Tartt's "The Secret History." The blend of the two is intriguing, and the feeling this work gives of 1930s European degeneracy and ennui is alluring and, one assumes, authentic, since it was first published in 1937 but has been made available in English for the first time now. The work isn't for everyone. It can be a bit ponderous and requires a certain mindset to appreciate its subtleties and its pace. But it is well worth reading for those with a literary bent, since, without a doubt, it is a highly nuanced literary work.
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Making the Journey Brighter, April 16, 2002
This is the best book I have ever read, and at age 65 after a great deal of reading, that should mean something. The review in <The Guardian> in July 2001 also lavished extravagant praise on the book, but picked a little bone about the treatment of the suicide theme. Albert Camus said that suicide was the great question of the entire 2oth century. This book portrays the character transformation that occurs when an individual really confronts his mortality, his fear of death, his falling into an abyss. This confrontation is important for healing and nowhere is it portrayed better than in Szerb's book.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
This is one of the great undiscovered masterpieces, February 6, 2002
By A Customer
I cut out a review of this book I read in the Times Literary Supplement Best Books of the Year round-up.
I'll quote the review now because I couldn't put it better:
"This radiantly funny and intelligent novel shows its author to be one of the masters of twentieth-century fiction. Len Rix's loving translation of a book that might have remained lost to us deserves special praise."
Funny, sad, thoughtful and intriguing - I cannot recommend it highly enough.
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