The Pendragon Legend (Pushkin Collection)

by Antal Szerb (Author), Antal Szerb (Author), Len Rix (Translator) (Author)

• Used

  Paperback
  2006

  $6.06

  The Pendragon Legend , set first in London and then in Wales, is a forerunner of a style currently fashionable, the philosophical thriller, though it combines other modes as well: upper-class comedy, murder-mystery and a ghost story with a compelling love interest. The mystical element, is diffused through an increasingly complex plot, as all threads converge in the final chapters. It is an essentially experimental novel, the fore-runner to Journey by Moonlight , Szerb's quintessential amalgamation of the romantic, the mystical and the transcendental. It is translated by Paul Vincent.

• Used

  Paperback
  2007

  $3.33

  At an end-of-the London season soiree, the young Hungarian scholar-dilettante Janos Batky is introduced to the Earl of Gwynedd, a reclusive eccentric who is the subject of strange rumours. Invited to the family seat, Pendragon Castle in North Wales, Batky receives a mysterious phone-call warning him not to go. Antal Szerb's first novel The Pendragon Legend (1934), set in Wales is a gently satirical blend of gothic and romantic genres, crossed with the murder mystery format to produce a fast-moving and often hilarious romp. But beneath the surface, the reader becomes aware of a steely intelligence probing moral, psychological and religious questions.