Life Is A Dream

Начало книги

The translator wishes to thank the editors of Southwest Review and Subtropics, where two of these stories, ‘The Waiter’s Nightmare’ and ‘The Landlady, or the Bewitched Guests’ first appeared. ‘Last Cigar at the Grey Arabian’ and ‘The Journalist and Death’ first appeared in Hungarian Quarterly (Budapest), and special thanks go to the editor, Zsofia Zachar.

Az élet álom (Life Is a Dream), Gyula Krúdy’s last volume to appear in his lifetime, was self-published by the author in December 1931.

In October 1931 the English press tycoon Lord Rothermere donated the sum of £1,000 to the Hungarian PEN Club, to be awarded to the author of the year’s most outstanding literary work. The poet Dezsö Kosztolányi, president of the Hungarian PEN, originally intended the prize for the fifty-three-year-old Gyula Krúdy, author of more than fifty volumes. Formerly a celebrated writer of bestsellers, Krúdy at the time lived in obscure poverty with wife and daughter in a crumbling hovel in Obuda on the outskirts of Budapest. Since he had no book published that year, and no publisher, Krúdy selected nine of his finest stories from recent years and had them published at his own expense, to qualify for the prize. On 23 December the printer contracted to produce 1,000 copies of the 254-page book, fifty copies to be delivered by noon on 31 December.

Читать дальше →