In Journey by Moonlight, a married couple travels to Italy—but the husband runs away from their honeymoon... Now we show you how the work, translated into many languages, has been published with different covers in different countries!
Antal Szerb (1901–1945) is one of the most popular Hungarian writers, who also made a significant contribution to literary history and translation. He studied Hungarian and German at university, but also learned English and French, and was awarded his doctorate in 1924. He wrote the history of Hungarian and world literature and also focused mainly on Anglo-Saxon literature, as well as poetry, essays, novels, and teaching. During World War II, his Jewish origins reduced his opportunities, and he was called up for labor service, dying in 1945 in a camp in Balf.
His best-known and most popular work is Journey by Moonlight, first published in 1937. The novel’s protagonist, Mihály, runs away from his honeymoon in Italy with his wife, Erzsi. The runaway husband wants to continue living out his lost youth and free himself from the shackles of his ‘adulthood’, which he believes to be untruthful, while he gets involved in various adventures and meets old acquaintances.
“There had been no trouble at all on the train. It began in the black alleys of Venice. Taking the water taxi from the train station, Mihály noticed the alleyways opening to the right and left as soon as they left the Grand Canal to take a short cut. He didn’t yet bother with them, however, because at first he was completely taken by how Venetian Venice was: the water between the houses; the gondolas; the lagoon; and the city’s brick-red-and-pink sheen. For Mihály was now seeing Italy for the first time – at the age of thirty-six, on his honeymoon. He had covered the map in the course of his long-extended years of wandering. He’d spent years in England and France, but he had always avoided Italy, sensing that the time was not yet ripe: he wasn’t prepared for it. He assigned Italy, along with siring offspring, to the category of grown-up matters, and in secret he even feared it: he feared it the way he shied away from strong sun-light, the scent of flowers and extremely pretty women. If he hadn’t got married and if his intention hadn’t been to begin his wedded life with the standard Italian honeymoon, he might have postponed the Italian journey until his death. Even now, he had come to Italy not on a visit but on a honeymoon, which is a different matter altogether. He could come now, in any case, because he was married now. By this point, so he thought, the danger that Italy represented could no longer threaten him.”—This is the menacing beginning of the novel.
One novel, sixteen languages, twenty-five covers. Which one is your favorite?
The book+covers series presents the covers of Central and Eastern European literary classics published in countries all over the world.
Cover graphics: Roland Molnár
Translation used for the quotation: 2016, Alma Classics Ltd, Richmond, Surrey, UK. Translation: Peter Czipott
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Notes from the moonland
