Knight of the Cordon Bleu

Early on in Gyula Krúdy's late masterwork Knight of the Cordon Bleu, in Vienna's Erzherzog Karl Hotel jubilant Magyars swarm to feast and celebrate with loud music the victory of their host Eduard Alvinczi's horse Táblabíró at the last "peacetime" Vienna Derby. The novel, framed by the world of horse racing in the waning days of the Dual Monarchy, takes us along with Alvinczi and his courtly household that includes his young protégé Kázmér Rezeda on a cavalcade of locations: the musty Széchenyi Palace in Vienna that hides a languishing adolescent girl; a fortified manor house in the countryside at the edge of the great Hungarian Plain, scene of a lavishly staged shooting festival featuring a lecture on mythic Magyar origins; an antique manse replete with revenants near Buda Castle Hill, and an all-night café in a seedier section of Pest, where a monumental card battle rages. The novel traces Alvinczi's belated attempts to placate the ghosts of his restless, itinerant career, bond with his neglected daughter, and find ways of leaving some memorable mark on his nation's history.