Journey By Moonlight

There are holiday novels, and then there is Journey by Moonlight, a book that begins with a honeymoon in Italy and somehow ends up wandering through the darker, stranger corridors of the human soul. This is rather like booking a relaxing weekend in the Lake District and accidentally finding yourself in an existential crisis of European literary significance.

Written by the Hungarian novelist Antal Szerb and presented here in a 2001 Pushkin edition, Journey by Moonlight is one of those books that inspires an unusual level of devotion among readers. People rarely say, "Yes, it was quite good." Instead, they tend to become slightly evangelical about it, pressing copies into the hands of friends while insisting that it is unlike anything else they have ever read.

The plot begins innocently enough. Mihály, a respectable newly married man, sets off on honeymoon with his wife in Italy. At this point readers may reasonably expect romance, sightseeing, perhaps a little personal growth, and a pleasant amount of Mediterranean sunshine. Antal Szerb, however, has other ideas. Before long Mihály is drifting away from both his wife and his carefully constructed adult life, becoming increasingly haunted by memories of youth, friendship, obsession, and the peculiar possibility that he may never have truly understood himself at all.

What follows is less a journey across Italy than a journey through memory, identity, longing, and the uncomfortable suspicion that adulthood may simply be a highly organised form of improvisation. Szerb approaches these themes with a wit so light and elegant that readers sometimes fail to notice how profoundly strange the novel has become until they are several chapters beyond the point of no return.

One of the great pleasures of the book is its refusal to behave as expected. Characters wander into and out of the story with dreamlike unpredictability. Conversations drift between comedy and melancholy. Beautiful landscapes become stages for emotional confusion. Entire sections feel as though they have been written by someone who simultaneously adores and mistrusts civilisation.

The title itself is wonderfully evocative. Journey by Moonlight sounds less like a novel and more like a set of travel instructions received from a mysterious aristocrat in a crumbling villa. It promises romance, danger, uncertainty, and the possibility of becoming lost. The book delivers all four with remarkable efficiency.

There is also a distinctly European quality to the novel that is difficult to define but immediately recognisable. Characters spend a great deal of time reflecting upon life, art, death, love, and the significance of obscure personal memories while travelling between beautiful cities. Modern readers may occasionally find themselves thinking, "Perhaps these people should simply have a cup of tea and calm down." Fortunately, they never do.

Pushkin’s decision to bring Szerb to a wider English-speaking audience was one of the happier events in modern publishing. The novel had long enjoyed legendary status among those fortunate enough to encounter it, and this edition helped introduce a new generation to one of the twentieth century’s most charmingly eccentric masterpieces.

Condition-wise, this copy is described as Good. It remains a perfectly serviceable companion for anyone wishing to spend several hundred pages questioning the nature of identity while wandering through Italy in excellent literary company.

Whether you are drawn to literary fiction, European classics, psychological novels, or simply enjoy books that refuse to stay within conventional boundaries, Journey by Moonlight is a remarkable experience. Funny, melancholy, intelligent, romantic, unsettling, and unexpectedly profound, it is the literary equivalent of taking a wrong turn and discovering that it was the most interesting decision you could possibly have made.

Exactly the sort of quietly brilliant and gloriously difficult-to-classify book that Crappy Old Books is delighted to rescue from obscurity and place directly into the hands of curious readers.

Keep browsing: See more Fiction books Other books by Antal Szerb