The Queen's Necklace

<strong>A witty and erudite love letter to a bygone age, from one of Europe's last great humanists.</strong>

"A sparkling slice of eighteenth-century life" Paul Bailey, <em>Independent</em>

In August 1785 Paris buzzed with scandal. It involved an eminent churchman, a notorious charlatan, a female fraudster, a part-time prostitute and the hated Queen herself. At its heart was the most expensive diamond necklace ever assembled and the web of fraud, folly and self-delusion it had inspired. In Szerb's last major work, a witty and often surprising account of events, the story is used as a standpoint from which to survey the entire age. Written in war-torn Hungary in the early 1940s, it constitutes a remarkable gesture of defiance against the brutal world in which the writer lived and died.

<strong>Antal Szerb</strong> (1901-1945) was born in Budapest. Though of Jewish descent, he was baptised at an early age and remained a lifelong Catholic. He rapidly established himself as a formidable scholar, through studies of Ibsen and Blake and histories of English, Hungarian and world literature. He was a prolific essayist and reviewer, ranging across all the major European languages. Debarred by successive Jewish laws from working in a university, he was subjected to increasing persecution, and finally murdered in a forced labour camp in 1945. Pushkin Press publishes his novels <em>The Pendragon Legend</em>, <em>Oliver VII</em> and his masterpiece <em>Journey by Moonlight</em>, as well as the historical study <em>The Queen's Necklace</em> and <em>Love in a Bottle and Other Stories</em>.