Böcker av Miklos Banffy

"Perfect late night reading" JAN MORRIS "Banffy is a born storyteller" PATRICK LEIGH FERMOR "Totally absorbing" MARTHA KEARNEY "So evocative" SIMON JENKINSThe second volume of Miklos Banffy's panoramic trilogy of the dying years of the Habsburg empire. The tale of two Transylvanian cousins, their loves, their ambitions and their fortunes continues in They Were Found Wanting. Balint Abady is forced to part from the beautiful and unhappily married Adrienne Uzdy. Laszlo Gyeroffy is rapidly heading for self-destruction through drink and his own fecklessness. The politicians, quarrelling among themselves and stubbornly ignoring their countrymen's real needs, are still pursuing their vendetta with the Habsburg rule from Vienna. Meanwhile they fail to notice how the Great Powers - through such events as Austria's annexation of Bosnia-Herzagovina in 1908 - are moving ever closer to the conflagration of 1914-1918 that will destroy their world for ever. Banffy's portrait contrasts a life of privilege and corruption with the lives and problems of an expatriate Romanian peasant minority whom Balint tries to help. It is an unrivalled evocation of a rich and fascinating aristocratic world oblivious of its impending demise.Part two of the trilogy that began with They Were Counted, and ends with They Were Divided.Translated from the Hungarian by Patrick Thursfield and Katalin Banffy-JelenWith a Foreword by Patrick Leigh-FermorWINNER OF THE WEIDENFELD TRANSLATION PRIZE

"Perfect late night reading" JAN MORRIS "Banffy is a born storyteller" PATRICK LEIGH FERMOR "Totally absorbing" MARTHA KEARNEY "So evocative" SIMON JENKINSThe final volume of Miklos Bánffy's panoramic trilogy of the dying years of the Habsburg empire.They Were Divided reflects the rapidly disintegrating course of events in Central Europe. In the foreground once again the lives of Balint, with his ultimately unhappy love for Adrienne, and his fatally flawed cousin, Laszlo Gyeroffy, who dies in poverty and neglect, are told with humour and a bitter-sweet nostalgia for a paradise lost through folly. The sinister and fast moving events in Montenegro, the Balkan wars, the apparent encirclement of Germany and Austria-Hungary by Britain, France and Russia, and finally the assassination of Franz Ferdinand all lead inexorably to the youth of Hungary marching off to their death and the dismemberment of their once great country.Volume three of the epic, sweeping and wholly immersive trilogy that began with They Were Counted, and continued with They Were Found Wanting.Translated from the Hungarian by Patrick Thursfield and Katalin Bánffy-JelenWith a Foreword by Patrick Leigh-FermorWINNER OF THE WEIDENFELD TRANSLATION PRIZE

"Perfect late night reading" JAN MORRIS "Banffy is a born storyteller" PATRICK LEIGH FERMOR "Totally absorbing" MARTHA KEARNEY "So evocative" SIMON JENKINSAn extraordinary portrait of the vanished world of pre-1914 Hungary, They Were Counted is an epic story told through the eyes of two cousins, Count Balint Abady and Count Laszlo Gyeroffy. Shooting parties in great country houses, turbulent scenes in parliament and the luxury life in Budapest provide the backdrop for this gripping, prescient novel, forming a chilling indictment of upper-class frivolity and political folly in which good manners cloak indifference and brutality. Abady becomes aware of the plight of a group of Romanian mountain peasants and champions their cause, while Gyeroffy dissipates his resources at the gaming tables, mirroring the decline of the Austro-Hungarian empire itself.This is the first volume Banffy's trilogy, which continues with They Were Found Wanting and They Were Divided. It was rediscovered for an international readership after the fall of communism in Hungary.With a Foreword by Patrick Leigh-FermorTranslated from Hungarian by Patrick Thursfield and Katalin Banffy-JelenWINNER OF THE WEIDENFELD TRANSLATION PRIZE

This fast-paced crime story and lighthearted romantic comedy, set against a backdrop of Mediterranean scenery and fascist menace in Italy and Hungary between the wars, is Miklos Banffy at his best. Now published in English for the first time, translated by Thomas Sneddon.

The short stories in this collection, from the tale of the idle young man dawdlingpleasantly in Venice to the Romanian villager meditating revenge on histormentor, draw on the author's experiences of life, love, sacrifice, betrayal andcourage, and reveal, as a recurring leitmotif, an indomitable will to survive.

Tells about the lives of Balint, with his ultimately unhappy love for Adrienne, and his fatally flawed cousin, Laszlo Gyeroffy, who dies in poverty and neglect.

An extraordinary portrait of the vanished world of pre-1914 Hungary. The second volume of Banffy's trilogy, rediscovered after the fall of communism in Hungary.

The liberal hero, Balint, is at odds with the politics of his time; he describes the idyllic pre-industrial world of Hungarian Transylvania, later to fall into the hands of first the Nazis and then the Communists, his love for Adrienne, married to an unpleasant and dangerous lunatic, and a Proustian society helplessly bent on its own destruction.

Shooting parties in great country houses, turbulent scenes in parliament and the luxury life in Budapest provide the backdrop for this gripping, prescient novel, forming a chilling indictment of upper-class frivolity and political folly, in which good manners cloak indifference and brutality.