Journey by Moonlight is a major classic of 1930s literature, penned by the talented Antal Szerb. This fantastically moving and darkly funny story tells of a bourgeois businessman, Mihály, torn between duty and desire.

'On the train, everything seemed fine. The trouble began in Venice ...'

Mihály has dreamt of Italy all his life. When he finally travels there on his honeymoon with his wife, Erszi, he soon abandons her in order to find himself. Haunted by old friends from his turbulent teenage days—beautiful, kind Tamas, brash and wicked Janos, and the sexless yet unforgettable Eva—Mihály embarks on a journey from Venice to Ravenna, Florence, and Rome.

In this darkly comic novel cut through by sex and death, Mihály loses himself in Venetian back alleys and the Tuscan and Umbrian countryside, driven by an irresistible desire to resurrect his lost youth among Hungary's Bright Young Things. He knows he must soon decide whether to return to the ambiguous promise of a placid adult life or allow himself to be seduced into a life of scandalous adventure.

Translated from the Hungarian by the renowned Len Rix, Journey by Moonlight is an undoubted masterpiece of Modernist literature, tracing the effects of a socially and sexually claustrophobic world on the life of one man.

Contempt is a brilliant and unsettling work by one of the revolutionary masters of modern European literature. All the qualities for which Alberto Moravia is justly famous—his cool clarity of expression, his exacting attention to psychological complexity and social pretension, his still-striking openness about sex—are evident in this story of a failing marriage.

Contempt (which was to inspire Jean-Luc Godard’s no-less-celebrated film) is an unflinching examination of desperation and self-deception in the emotional vacuum of modern consumer society.

The Radetzky March charts the history of the Trotta family through three generations, spanning the rise and fall of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. From the Battle of Solferino to the entombment of the last Hapsburg emperor, Roth's intelligent and compassionate narrative illuminates the crumbling of a way of life.

This epic saga offers a vivid portrait of a family entwined with the fate of an empire. Each generation reflects the changing times, with the grandfather's enoblement, the son's dedication to civil virtues, and the grandson's struggle against unattainable family standards. It's a tale rich with psychological penetration and tragic force.

With its blend of dark humor and tragic irony, this novel is a universal story of decline and nostalgia, capturing the essence of a civilization on the brink of transformation.

Warsaw under Russian rule in the late 1870s is the setting for Prus’s grand panorama of social conflict, political tension, and personal suffering. The middle-aged hero, Wokulski, successful in business, is being destroyed by his obsessive love for a frigid society doll, Izabela. Embattled aristocrats, the new men of finance, Dickensian tradesmen, and the urban poor all come vividly to life on the vast, superbly detailed canvas against which Wokulski’s personal tragedy is played out.

Unlike his Western European counterparts, Prus had to work under official censorship. In this edition, most of the smaller cuts made by the Tsarist censor have been restored, and one longer fragment is included as an appendix.

Le Roman de l'adolescent myope invites readers into the world of a precocious and tormented adolescent in early 20th century Bucharest. The narrator, with precision and candor, unveils his daily life: the quirks of his teachers, the plots of his classmates, their sexual desires, and his first erotic exploits. At the heart of his journey is the compelling need to write, intertwined with his discovery of personal identity and otherness.

This novel, found in a Bucharest attic, is not only a captivating story but also an invaluable document about the great writer Mircea Eliade, who was once this genius adolescent, revealing himself while pretending to discover.