The Adventures of Sindbad (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9781590174456)

Gyula Kr棈y (1878-1933) was born in Ny叝egyh痙a in northeastern Hungary. His mother had been a maid for the aristocratic Kr棈y family, and she and his father, a lawyer, did not marry until Gyula was seventeen. Kr棈y began writing short stories and publishing brief newspaper pieces while still in his teens. Rebelling against his father's wish that he become a lawyer, he worked as a newspaper editor for several years before moving to Budapest, where he, his wife, and two children lived off the money he made as a writer of short stories. In 1911 he found success with Sindbad's Youth, the first of his books recounting the exploits of his fictional alter ego. Kr棈y's subsequent novels about contemporary Budapest, including The Crimson Coach (1914) and Sunflower (1918; available from NYR B Classics), proved popular during the First World War and the Hungarian Revolution, but his drinking, gambling, and philandering left him broke and led to the dissolution of his first marriage. During the late 1920s and early 1930s, Kr棈y suffered from declining health and a diminishing readership, even as he was awarded Hungary's most prestigious literary award, the Baumgarten Prize. Forgotten in the years after his
death, Kr棈y was rediscovered in 1940, when S疣dor M疵ai published Sindbad Comes Home, a fictionalized account of Kr棈y's last day. The success of the book led to a revival of Kr棈y's works and to his recognition as one of the greatest Hungarian writers.

George Szirtes is a Hungarian-born English poet and translator. He received the T. S. Eliot Prize for Reel (2004), and his New and Collected Poems were published in 2008. As a translator of poetry and fiction he has won a variety of prizes and awards, including the European Poetry Translation Prize and the D駻y Prize.