Hungary: They Were Counted by Miklós Bánffy
Synopsis: (from amazon) Painting an unrivalled portrait of the vanished world of pre-1914 Hungary, this story is told through the eyes of two young Transylvanian cousins, Count Balint Abády and Count László Gyeroffy. Shooting parties in great country houses, turbulent scenes in parliament, and the luxury of 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. Abády 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. The first book in a trilogy published before World War II, it was rediscovered after the fall of Communism in Hungary and this edition contains a new foreword.
Thoughts: So much of this book actually takes place in modern day Romania, but, at the time set, Transylvania was a province of Hungary and the plot concerns the Hungarian ruling class, plus with all the other scenes in what we would consider Hungary-proper today, I’m going to keep this book as my Hungarian entry in my round-the-world book journey.
So this is one of those books that is more important than it is enjoyable; it’s not a fun book and the characters aren’t overly sympathetic, or maybe they were to the author and other members of the Hungarian aristocracy in the dawning days of the twentieth century. Nowadays, that whole dismantled universe is so foreign (although maybe if I flip through the pages of Paris Match, it still exists as a sliver of its former self) but Bánffy has a knack for drawing the proletariat reader in enough, especially one that’s read any large party scenes from Tolstoi and the like. It’s actually very Tolstoi-esque, like the Peace parts of War and Peace, managing forestry estates and trying to set up co-operatives for the peasants and being cheated by your employees, then having doomed love affairs, gambling and gamboling at fancy dress balls while being unquestionably rich.
This is the first book of a trilogy. The other two books aren’t (in the library and in English) (brackets for logical statement, not distributing over the and), so I have to buy them if I want to read them. I guess that will be the test of how much this book stays with me – will I be compelled to buy the following two books or try to read the library versions in French?
Not so great thing about the translation: They took out the accents in the names because it would be too confusing. That is what the translators said in the introduction. Accents would be too confusing for the sort of person who picks up a six hundred page novel about the Hungarian aristocracy? It seems like they may be underestimating the intelligence of their potential readership. I put the accents back in myself in the synopsis for y’all.
Also, bonus – this was the first e-book I ever bought, way back in June 2012 for my iPad, before I learned that reading on the iPad was an eyestraining nightmare. Now I read this on my kobo and it was much better.
Rating: 4/5
Previous Readings Around the World.