In these marvellously written tales, Sindbad, a voyager in the realms of memory and imagination, travels through the centuries in pursuit of an ideal of love that is directed as much at the feminine essence as at his individual lovers. He is by nature a melancholy sensualist, but whether the women he seduces and loves are projections of his desire, or he of theirs, is a moot question.
These short stories flow without a strict narrative framework Sindbad journeys between the past and the present and is merely a ghost in many of his adventures. Although Sindbad can move through time, it is time that proves his chief enemy, and youth that remains his real love. This deeply autumnal book, full of resonances and associations, is an erotic elegy to the dying Habsburg Empire.
The stories are taken from the omnibus triple-volume Hungarian edition published as The Three Books of Sindbad in Hungary in 1944, which includes The Travels of Sindbad (1912), The Resurrection of Sindbad (1916), and The Youth and Grief of Sindbad (1917).

Gyula Krúdy (1878-1933) was is being recognised as one of Hungary’s most remarkable novelist, he is remembered as a bon viveur and journalist whose writing captured and chronicled the end of an era. Krúdy’s writing anticipates both ’stream of consciousness’ modernism and the magic realism of Latin American writers. 

Introduction by George Szirtes

Youth
Sindbad’s Dream
By the Danube
Sindbad and the Actress
Winter Journey
The Secret Room
Escape from Women
Mrs Bánati, the Lost Woman
The Green Veil
The Night Visitor
An Overnight Stay
Sumach Trees in Blossom
Rozina
The Unforgettable Compliment
Sentimental Journey
The Children’s Eyes
Mine
The Woman Who Told Tales
Albert Finds New Employment
The Red Ox
Marabou
Madness from beyond the Grave
Escape from Life
Escape from Death

Notes