A witty & erudite love letter to a bygone age, from one of Europe`s last great humanists. ”A sparkling slice of eighteenth-century life” Paul Bailey, Independent In August 1785 Paris buzzed with scandal. It involved an eminent churchman, a notorious charlatan, a female fraudster, a part-time prostitute & the hated Queen herself. At its heart was the most expensive diamond necklace ever assembled & the web of fraud, folly & self-delusion it had inspired. In Szerb`s last major work, a witty & often surprising account of events, the story is used as a standpoint from which to survey the entire age. Written in war-torn Hungary in the early 1940s, it constitutes a remarkable gesture of defiance against the brutal world in which the writer lived & died. Antal Szerb (1901-1945) was born in Budapest. Though of Jewish descent, he was baptised at an early age & remained a lifelong Catholic. He rapidly established himself as a formidable scholar, through studies of Ibsen & Blake & histories of English, Hungarian & world literature. He was a prolific essayist & reviewer, ranging across all the major European languages. Debarred by successive Jewish laws from working in a university, he was subjected to increasing persecution, & finally murdered in a forced labour camp in 1945. Pushkin Press publishes his novels The Pendragon Legend, Oliver VII & his masterpiece Journey by Moonlight, as well as the historical study The Queen`s Necklace & Love in a Bottle & Other Stories.