Winner of the 2004 German Publishers and Booksellers Association Peace Prize

In The Glance of Countess Hahn-Hahn (down the Danube), Péter Esterházy tells the story of a professional traveler, commissioned--like Marco Polo by Kublai Khan--to undertake a voyage of discovery and prepare a travelogue. Communicating the details of his journey through terse and surreal telegrams, the Traveller weaves a rich tapestry of narratives, evoking the ethereal past and the precarious present of a disappearing world.

Péter Esterházy (born 14 April 1950 in Budapest) is one of the most widely known contemporary Hungarian writers. His books are considered to be significant contributions to postwar literature. He studied mathematics at ELTE university in Budapest from 1969 to 1974; his first writings were published in literary journals in 1974. He worked as a mathematician from 1974 to 1978, and he became a freelance writer in 1978.

"Brilliant." --New York Times Book Review

"We have many fine writers in America, but we do not have even a single one of the stature and exemplary ambition of Péter Esterházy. . . . [O]ne of the finest explorations of going on a journey and of the idea of what it means to go anywhere. . . . Among the best fiction of 1998." --Los Angeles Times Book Review

"A pleasantly delirious romp through the fields of language."

—The Washington Times