Journey by Moonlight


Journey by 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 Mihály, 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. There is no doubt an element of Freudianism in this. Psychoanalysis was especially influential and risqué at the time.

Characters in "Journey by Moonlight"

Beside English, the novel has been translated into German, French, Italian, Slovene, Spanish, Dutch and Croatian.