Beach Reads for the Discerning Traveller…
Ranging from the sober to the surreal, madcap to mordant, these Pushkin Classics – all thrillers of sorts – will entertain and intrigue you over the summer holidays.
Salvador Dalí, Hidden Faces
Love, death, wartime espionage, Parisian aristocrats with fanciful names, plus a few melting clocks… The great Surrealist painter’s only foray into fiction is a feast of imagistic prose and a headlong rush through a decade of European turmoil.
Hans Keilson, Comedy in a Minor Key
Wim and Marie, a young couple in Nazi-occupied Holland, agree to hide Jewish Nico in their spare room. The three unexpected housemates are making a success of the situation despite its awkwardness – until Nico dies, and his hosts are faced with a whole new set of problems. Witty, humane, and full of life’s little ironies, this is one of only four works of fiction that Keilson wrote in his 101-year life.
Alexander Lernet-Holenian, I Was Jack Mortimer
As much a picaresque tour of pre-war Vienna as it is a thriller, this Austrian novel tells the story of a young cab driver whose latest fare is shot dead in his back seat. What seems at first a brilliant way to avoid getting charged with murder – impersonate the dead man – proves a dangerous entrée into a tangled web of intrigue.
Antal Szerb, The Pendragon Legend
A joyfully satirical love letter to Britain, this gothic-romantic pastiche tells of the adventures of a young Hungarian scholar (much like the author) on a visit to the ancient family seat of a Welsh aristocrat. Nothing is quite as it seems at Llanvygan Castle, from the mysterious sounds to be heard at night to the metafictional games Szerb plays with his readers.
