Miklós Bánffy – författare

The liberal hero, Balint, is at odds with the politics of his time; he lyrically 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.This is a novel hard to put down, a masterpiece of twentieth-century literature that deserves to be much more widely known.First published in English in the early 1990s by a small publisher, and a huge word-of-mouth success, this is the first edition in hardback, and in two rather than three volumes.

"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"Bánffy 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 Bánffy'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

"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

'The Tolstoy of Transylvania... Bánffy's trilogy is just about as good as any fiction I have ever read' - Charles Moore, Telegraph

'The elegiac wisdom of his writing makes him one of those people whose life you wish could have ended in something other than calamity... a great storyteller' - Guardian

Back from Troy, the 'divine' Helen looks with fresh eyes at her foul-mouthed hero-husband; a girl in a mountain village seeks reassurance about her arranged marriage; a drunken mandarin invites the devil to tea; and a German princess discovers that people actually drink goat's milk. These delightful tales exhibit Bánffy's customary blend of high seriousness and subtle humour, his rich imagination and his remarkably wide-ranging sympathies.

Appearing in English for the first time, in finely nuanced translations by the prize-winning Len Rix, The Enchanted Night furthers the writer's growing reputation as one of the most compelling European writers of the twentieth century.

Part of the Pushkin Press Classics series: timeless storytelling by icons of literature, hand-picked from around the globe.

Translated by Len Rix.

Count Miklós Bánffy was born in 1873 in Kolozsvár in what was then Hungarian Transylvania. A brilliant polymath, he studied law, music and painting, became a noted stage and set designer, wrote plays, short stories and novels, and served as his country's foreign minister. During the Second World War he urged both his own and the Romanian governments to withdraw their support for Germany: in revenge the retreating Wehrmacht looted and burned his estate. After the Soviet occupation he was declared a 'class enemy' and had to wait until 1949 before, penniless and in broken health, he was allowed to rejoin his family in Budapest. He died a year later.

Len Rix was born in Zimbabwe and now lives in Cambridge. A celebrated translator from the Hungarian, he has been awarded the Oxford-Weidenfeld Translation Prize and the PEN America Translation Prize. His translations of works by Antal Szerb, all published by Pushkin Press, have been widely acclaimed.

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