The Glance of Countess Hahn-Hahn (down the Danube)

In The Glance of Countess Hahn-Hahn (down the Danube), PÉter EsterhÁzy tells the story of a professional traveler, commissioned--like Marco Polo by Kublai Khan--to undertake a voyage of discovery and prepare a travelogue. Communicating the details of his journey through terse and surreal telegrams, the Traveller weaves a rich tapestry of narratives, evoking the ethereal past and the precarious present of a disappearing world.

"Brilliant." --New York Times Book Review

"We have many fine writers in America, but we do not have even a single one of the stature and exemplary ambition of PÉter EsterhÁzy. . . . [O]ne of the finest explorations of going on a journey and of the idea of what it means to go anywhere. . . . Among the best fiction of 1998." --Los Angeles Times Book Review