Lírai bolyongások / Lyrical Rambles

Jaguar (1914) is the tale of the meteoric rise and fall of an apocryphal newspaper. The artfully constructed plot is set in the bohemian milieu of an easy-going fin de siecle Budapest – where Heltai himself was a young journalist – in which the telephone exists, cars do not, much importance attaches to coffee-houses and journalists rise late and work till all hours.

Originally published in 1942 and now rediscovered to international acclaim, this taut and exquisitely structured novel by the Hungarian master Sandor Marai conjures the melancholy glamour of a decaying empire and the disillusioned wisdom of its last heirs.