Antal Szerb

(1901 - 1945)

Born in Budapest, the Hungarian novelist and essayist Antal Szerb wrote his final book, The Queen’s Necklace, in 1943, the same year that his History of World Literature was put on a list of forbidden works, and one year before he lost his university position because of anti-Semitic laws. He was deported to a concentration camp, where he died at the age of forty-three.