"Just divine . . . the kind of book that makes you imagine the author has had private access to your own soul."-- The Guardian This is the first and only hardback gift edition of this classic title, in which a businessman on honeymoon struggles to reconcile his bourgeois duties with an irresistible desire to resurrect his lost youth among Hungary's Bright Young People. Szerb's darkly comic novel traces the effects of a socially and sexually claustrophobic world on the life of one man, torn between placid normality and sensational adventure. Antal Szerbwas born in 1901 into a cultivated Budapest family of Jewish descent. He was a prolific scholar, publishing books on drama and poetry, as well as influential histories of English, Hungarian, and world literature. He died in the forced-labor camp at Balf in January 1945.