In August 1936 a Hungarian writer in his mid-thirties arrives by train in Venice, on a journey overshadowed by the coming war and charged with intense personal nostalgia. Aware that he might never again visit this land whose sites and scenes had once exercised a strange and terrifying power over his imagination, he immerses himself in a stream of discoveries, reappraisals and inevitable self-revelations. From Venice, he traces the route taken by the Germanic invaders of old down to Ravenna, to stand, fulfilling a lifelong dream, before the sacred mosaics of San Vitale. This journey into his private past brings Antal Szerb firmly, and at times painfully, up against an explosive present, producing some memorable observations on the social wonders and existential horrors of Mussolini's new Roman Imperium.
"The recent revival of this amiably brilliant man’s writing is in large part due to the efforts of the translator Len Rix and the Pushkin Press. . . It seems impossible that Szerb’s wit, his intelligence and his generosity could be preserved in a book written in the midst of the fanatical hatreds that would consume him. But then, it’s a small miracle that we have so many books available from this gentle giant of European letters." - The Wall Street Journal
"Translated by Len Rix, this slim, elegant volume traces Szerb's farewell journey to his beloved Italy. . . The prose is intimate and disarming. . . Szerb deftly weaves Italy's timeless allure ("everything there is so old") with observations on its contemporary fever." — Publishers Weekly
"The Third Tower is the vivid chronicle of a trip through a familiar landscape. The tone of the book conveys wonder, but the writing is always under the writer’s control. . . expertly rendered into English by Len Rix, Szerb’s longtime translator. . . The nostalgia that pervades The Third Tower is political, arising from an awareness of Europe’s disastrous shift toward fascism and its disappearing tolerance of individual freedoms and differences of opinion." — The Millions
"His love affair with literature was passionate, intense, and serious, but for all that it was never humorless, and it never lost the flirtatious and giddy quality of an adolescent crush. Reading Szerb on literature—reading Szerb at all—is like watching a lover dote on the object of his affections. . . It is the disparity between literary perfection and drab actuality that motivates us, in Szerb’s view, to improve our world, to question its assumptions and tear at its established fabrics." - Becca Rothfield, The New Republic
"a rich travelogue full of both joy and foreboding. . .To travel with Szerb is to have a charming and erudite guide, one who is nearly intoxicated by being in Italy. . . It is a beautiful and charming book, and a short one." - The American Interest
In August 1936 a Hungarian writer in his mid-thirties arrives by train in Venice, on a journey overshadowed by the coming war and charged with intense personal nostalgia. Aware that he might never again visit this land whose sites and scenes had once exercised a strange and terrifying power over his imagination, he immerses himself in a stream of discoveries, reappraisals and inevitable self-revelations. From Venice, he traces the route taken by the Germanic invaders of old down to Ravenna, to stand, fulfilling a lifelong dream, before the sacred mosaics of San Vitale. This journey into his private past brings Antal Szerb firmly, and at times painfully, up against an explosive present, producing some memorable observations on the social wonders and existential horrors of Mussolini's new Roman Imperium.
Praise
"The recent revival of this amiably brilliant man’s writing is in large part due to the efforts of the translator Len Rix and the Pushkin Press. . . It seems impossible that Szerb’s wit, his intelligence and his generosity could be preserved in a book written in the midst of the fanatical hatreds that would consume him. But then, it’s a small miracle that we have so many books available from this gentle giant of European letters." - The Wall Street Journal
"Translated by Len Rix, this slim, elegant volume traces Szerb's farewell journey to his beloved Italy. . . The prose is intimate and disarming. . . Szerb deftly weaves Italy's timeless allure ("everything there is so old") with observations on its contemporary fever." — Publishers Weekly
"The Third Tower is the vivid chronicle of a trip through a familiar landscape. The tone of the book conveys wonder, but the writing is always under the writer’s control. . . expertly rendered into English by Len Rix, Szerb’s longtime translator. . . The nostalgia that pervades The Third Tower is political, arising from an awareness of Europe’s disastrous shift toward fascism and its disappearing tolerance of individual freedoms and differences of opinion." — The Millions
"His love affair with literature was passionate, intense, and serious, but for all that it was never humorless, and it never lost the flirtatious and giddy quality of an adolescent crush. Reading Szerb on literature—reading Szerb at all—is like watching a lover dote on the object of his affections. . . It is the disparity between literary perfection and drab actuality that motivates us, in Szerb’s view, to improve our world, to question its assumptions and tear at its established fabrics." - Becca Rothfield, The New Republic
"a rich travelogue full of both joy and foreboding. . .To travel with Szerb is to have a charming and erudite guide, one who is nearly intoxicated by being in Italy. . . It is a beautiful and charming book, and a short one." - The American Interest
