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Oliver VII
by
Antal Szerb,
Len Rix
A witty reworking of one of the most interesting questions of existentialism, this is a playful work of comic philosophy
Paperback, 176 pages
Published
January 1st 2007
by Pushkin Press
(first published 1943)
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Szerb, Antal. OLIVER VII. (1942; this ed. 2007). ***. Szerb was an Hungarian novelist who published most of his books during the 1930s and 1940s. He was ultimately executed in a Nazi prison camp in 1945 for being a Jew by descent, although he was a practicing Catholic. He turned down several offers that could have led to his freedom, but refused them because he did not want to leave his friends and relatives in the camp without him. He is one of the few Hungarians who still have books in print i...more
Hungary's literary icon, Antal Szerb, was an figure that rose to well-respected status quickly and whose life ended too early. A Jew who died in a concentration camp in 1945, his last work, Oliver VII(1942), offers none of the dark and horrific circumstances that Hungarians Jews witnessed and withstood. The wittiness of Szerb has been repeatedly compared to Luis Pirandello, the Italian playwright, but there is much more to Szerb than mere mimicry. Oliver VII is a novel, Szerb's lightest by far,...more
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Reviewed by The Guardian, The Complete Review, Pechorin's Journal
Reviewed by The Guardian, The Complete Review, Pechorin's Journal
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Szerb was born in 1901 to assimilated Jewish parents in Budapest, but baptized Catholic. He studied Hungarian, German and later English, obtaining a doctorate in 1924. From 1924 to 1929 he lived in France and Italy, also spending a year in London, England.
As a student he published essays on Georg Trakl and Stefan George, and quickly established a formidable reputation as a scholar, writing erudite...more
More about Antal Szerb...
As a student he published essays on Georg Trakl and Stefan George, and quickly established a formidable reputation as a scholar, writing erudite...more
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