"No one who has read it has failed to love it." — Nicholas Lezard, Guardian "Szerb belongs with the master novelists of the twentieth century." — Paul Bailey, Daily Telegraph ANXIOUS TO PLEASE his bourgeois father, Mihaly has joined the family firm in Budapest. Pursued by nostalgia for his bohemian youth, he seeks escape in marriage to Erzsi, not realising that she has chosen him as a means to ...