Oliver’s Return. The Subtle Artistry of Antal Szerb
Oliver’s Return. The Subtle Artistry of Antal Szerb

Summary/Abstract: It was a matter for some celebration last year when Antal Szerb’s publishers finally reissued his Oliver VII. This charmingly wayward novel has been out of the public mind for far too long. Written in a steadily darkening period of its author’s life, in an already dark period of Europe’s history, it is a hymn to joy, a glimpse of a more innocent world made all the more subversive by its shrewdness, its clear-eyed freedom from illusion, its generous transcendence of everything that is mean, life-hating and cynical. The tale of a bored king who plots against his own throne and ends up impersonating himself in exile, it slipped into the world, appropriately enough, under cover of a nom de plume—in fact posing as a translation—and it has challenged interpretation ever since. It is unashamedly playful. It touches on questions of philosophy and morality while reducing the reader to gales of laughter. Indifferent to questions of political correctness and intellectual fashion, it evades every category into which the critic might wish to fix it. And it has paid the price, spending decades in near-total oblivion. […]

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