"A traveler by moonlight"
One of the most important Hungarian novels of the modern era, penned by one of the great Hungarian and European novelists alike, Szerb Antal, the famous author, novelist, translator and literary historian. This novel was published in its first Hungarian edition in 1937, achieving success at the local, international and global levels, and was turned into cinematic films, plays and serials. A novel that delves into the analysis of the human psyche, where the hero tries hard to return to the past through the time machine, and to complete his enjoyment of his youth away from marriage, but to no avail. Man does this, his destiny is written, and he must live it. The hero of our novel, Mihai, tries to escape from his married life, but the end of the novel is where it began. The novel ends with this sentence, “As long as man lives, something will inevitably and always happen,” along with other details.
The most amazing thing about this story is that it is true! Not only because of the strangeness of its events, as the Renaissance era is rich in wondrous adventures, but the reason for its strangeness is the almost complete forgetting of it.
The two orphan children: Ghost and Columb are deceived; To participate in a colonial mission to explore the new world, as it is their only hope of meeting their father, the disappeared knight. This forgotten expedition is led by Philoganion, a warrior returning from the Crusades, bringing with him a diverse team of soldiers, workers, engineers, as well as an unprecedented element; Children of orphan age, the age that allows them to learn new languages quickly enough; To work as translators with the indigenous people.
On one of the most mysterious and exciting French campaigns of the Renaissance, and through the story of two orphans searching for hope and the human struggles they go through, in his book, which won the Goncourt Prize, Ruffin takes us on a captivating historical journey from the shores of France at the beginning of the era of religious unrest to Brazil with its red woods. To describe to us man's struggle with nature, and the first encounter between different civilizations, with the curiosity, fear, admiration, and passion it carries.
The little boy escapes from the midwife's hands, and all attempts to catch him fail, until Abu Muharib, a retired policeman who suffers from rheumatism, intervenes, using his old hunting experience.
The chapters of the story continue, until the moment in which the reader finds himself facing a world in which reality is mixed with its strict natural laws, and imagination soaring on the same wings that changed the course of (the little one’s) life with her presence first, and her absence next..
What wings are these where scissors, scalpels, knives and guns lurk?
Who are those howling in the background?
What fate did those living below end up with?
The novel raises many questions, then stops at this point, shirking the burden of definitive answers, and assuming that the reader will not be let down by the wings of his imagination in reaching an answer.
