The Adventures of Sinbad
The Adventures of Sinbad
By Gyula Krúdy
Translated by George Szirtes
“There is about Krúdy an absolutely railed-down otherworldliness. A brilliant spectrum where reality is just one possible colour… This book is just a gift. I am grateful to George Szirtes for making it possible for me to read it and praise it.”—Michael Hofmann, The Times Literary Supplement
“The Adventures follows a dream-weaving seducer, and Krúdy’s prose is appropriately seductive, a litany of long, languid, sighing sentences that introduce an element of enchantment to Sindbad’s universe of provincial inns and restaurants in Pest where one might rendezvous with an actress or a goldsmith’s wife….Sindbad’s Adventures, then, are some of the loveliest violet-tinted lies ever put to paper—wreathed around some very nettling truths about what we call love.”—The L Magazine
The Adventures of Sindbad is the most famous of Gyula Krúdy's books, and belongs to the Sinbad series, which functions as the author's defacto alter-ego. An uncanny evocation of the autumn of the Hapsburg Empire, Sinbad tells of a lothario's travels and misadventures, dreams and misgivings.
Despite the literary success Krúdy found in 1911, with the publication of Sinbad's Youth, his drinking, gambling, and philandering left him broke , and during the late 1920s and early 1930s, he suffered from declining health and a diminishing readership.
Forgotten in the years after his death, Krúdy was rediscovered in 1940, when Sándor Márai published Sindbad Comes Home, a fictionalized account of Krúdy’s last day. The success of the book led to a revival of Krúdy’s works and to his recognition as one of the greatest Hungarian writers.
Paperback
NYRB Classics, 2012
Originally published 1944
5.1 x 7.9 x 0.5 inches
ISBN 9781590174456
Folklore, Fiction