The Transylvanian Trilogy, Volume I: They Were Counted; Introduction by Hugh Thomas (Everyman's Library Contemporary Classics Series)

THEY WERE COUNTED is a somewhat old-fashioned novel, yet very evocative and engrossing. It is set in the years 1904 through 1906, in Transylvania and Hungary. It is the first of a trilogy of novels, commonly called "The Transylvanian Trilogy", which I think a rather insipid title. I much prefer "The Writing on the Wall", which is what it was called by its author, Count Miklós Bánffy (b. 1873, d. 1950).Bánffy was a nobleman, from an old Transylvanian family of high distinction and influence. In the early 1900's, when Transylvania was still part of Hungary (which, in turn, was part of the ramshackle Austro-Hungarian Empire), Bánffy was a member of the Hungarian parliament and a statesman. He saw, first-hand, the decline of the aristocracy, the disintegration of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and the game of pick-up sticks in Central Europe following World War I, including the transfer of Transylvania to Romania. In the 1930s, he wrote his trilogy about that decline and disintegration, and his preferred title, "The Writing on the Wall", is apt.History and Central European politics are the backdrop for THEY WERE COUNTED. But the story revolves around the obsessions of two cousins, Count Balint Abady and Count Laszlo Gyeroffy. In many respects, Balint Abady is a respectable and conscientious young nobleman, a member of the Hungarian parliament and interested in improving the lot of the peasants living on his family's Transylvanian estates. But he is overwhelmed by his obsession for Adrienne, his childhood friend who ended up in an unhappy marriage to Pal Uzdy, a creepy, brutal nobleman of Tartar background. Laszlo Gyeroffy is obsessed first with music, then with a young marriageable countess, Klara Kollonich, and then with gambling. By the end of the novel one of those obsessions has overwhelmed and nigh destroyed him.Bánffy's account of the pheasant hunts, balls, dinners, courtships, and affairs of the nobility against the backdrop of history is very reminiscent of "War and Peace", though, thankfully, without the extended historical and philosophical digressions. ("Anna Karenina" also comes to mind.) There are multiple instances of social climbing through marriage, high stakes gambling, insults and duels, recourse to pawnbrokers and moneylenders, and vamping and philandering. The novel moves with excellent pace and once the reader has become familiar with its numerous characters (about 100 pages into the novel) he/she will begin racing through it eager to find out what happens next.A sense of doom hangs over Bánffy's trilogy, but things got much worse for Transylvania with the coming of the Nazis and then the Communists. The trilogy, unwelcome in the new authoritarian political landscapes, faded into obscurity and Bánffy died in poverty in 1950. Only in the 1980s was it reissued in Hungary and it was not translated into English until 1999. One of the co-translators is Bánffy's daughter, but I sense that the translation is not a particularly distinguished one. Nor is the Introduction to this Everyman's edition, by Hugh Thomas, particularly distinguished. My recommendation is to skip it and plunge directly into the novel and then swim with it through Part One, by which point, if you are like me, the flow of the story will sweep you along, ever more rapidly, to the end. And, if you are like me, by novel's end you will be looking forward to Volume II ("They Were Found Wanting") and Volume III ("They Were Divided").

I do not review many works of fiction: Classics tend to be well-known and contemporary works already sufficiently commented-upon. Banffy's triology is an exception that deserves its critical characterization as a "rediscovered classic" and also deserves to be much better known. It is aptly described in various other reviews as an engrossing work of (strongly) fact-based historical fiction. Despite some stylistic weaknesses and a fair bit of political pontificating by the author, I found the books captivating, and happily recommend them.I can't say whether Banffy's primary intention was to write a history of Transylvania in the critical years preceding the First World War or to examine the thinking, passions and relationships of the class of characters through whom he tells that history. I suspect his initial objective at least was the former, but I think that the particular force of the books lies in his exceptional insight into and portrayal of the characters who are living their lives in the shadow of that history. In any case, his depictions of the time, place and social relations and of his all-to-human characters are convincing and often compelling. Despite a narrative that occasionally slips into the romantic or melodramatic style of the times, this is a fascinating slice of the history of a country and a class that also delves wonderfully into the psychology and lives of its characters.A few additional observations for prospective readers. As a ranking diplomat of aristocratic origin who actively participated in the world he invokes, Banffy knows it well; but not everyone could tell the tale as effectively. That said, the author decidely has his biases: He best understands and empathizes with those tragically oblivious aristocrats he knew so well, even as he depicts their folly, prejudices, and ultimately anachronistic lives. The best remain possessed of a traditional sense of moral and social duty, but it is simply no longer adequate to the transforming times. Most peasants and (non-malevolent) servants are deserving of sympathy and help, but appear as ignorant, suspicious and sometimes violent, and in need of care and direction. The bourgeoisie in the form of inn-keepers, small merchants, lawyers, bankers, doctors and middle managers are not much loved or respected by Banffy, and are a baneful influence on politics (too many will become the "corporals" of the future). Also, Banffy's views on the merits and failures respectively of such political and economic institutions as cooperatives and markets are pronounced, and occasionally lectured about (a footnote by the editors/translators observes that one short speech made by a protagonist was probably actually given by Banffy himself). So, Banffy was in many respects of his time, and surely intended his books as preachments as much as historical or literary exercises. But the striking thing, to me at least, is how little all this distracts from the force of Banffy's strong narrative of the times and his characters. Even when somewhat annoyed by and tempted to quarrel with the author's social and political predilections, I rarely was more than briefly taken away from the story he tells.I am tempted to suggest that prospective readers simply disregard the nits that I pick in the previous paragraph. I leave this in simply to put those about to purchase a three-book set on fair notice that not every page or consideration is brilliant and, yes, there is occasional tedium. But I add without hesitation that I think most readers will find these of little consequence relative to the merits of Banffy's story.

Beautiful novel filled with interesting people and places. Devoured it.

I received Volume 1 and Volume 2/3 very quickly, as I have always experienced with Amazon, and I was surprised just how nice these additions are. Nicely bound, the cloth book marker, and beautiful print were unexpected. I look forward to reading them and keeping them on my bookshelf for many years to come.

Set in Hungary before WWI, this three-volume saga combines the best of Trollope, Proust, Tolstoy, and Milan Kundera. The descriptions of the Hungarian countryside in summer are reminiscent of Tolstoy, the descriptions of the Hungarian Parliament are reminiscent of Trollope's Phineas Finn, the descriptions of the Transylvanian mountain villages in winter are reminiscent of The Unbearable Lightness of Being, and the unreality of Hungarians at play in Venice is, oddly, Proustian. Only recently translated into English, a must-have for serious readers of 20th-century continental literature.

I found this trilogy engrossing and loved every minute of reading it. Although it is fiction, it is based a great deal on the author's own experience and is thus a poignant account of the Transylvanian aristocracy in the decade leading up to the First World War. This is a must-read for anyone interested in Europe before the Great War.

Romantic and beautiful. Fully defined characters and interesting political commentary. It seems to be a good translation of the original

Sensitive and beautifully observed details bring this period fully to life. Wonderfully written and engaging plot. I now have Vols. II and III and can't wait to read them.

I have just finished all 600 pages of They Were Counted, by Mikos Banffy, a much-praised mammoth novel of Hungary at the beginning of the twentieth century and the first of a trilogy. Jan Morris and Patrick Leigh Fermour are among the distinguished critics who have a high opinion of this work, and Hugh Thomas in his introduction to the Everyman edition describes it as “one of the very greatest twentieth-century novels.” I disagree.The book fails to work at a variety of levels. First, there is an enormous cast of characters, most of whom serve no purpose except to fill a paragraph or two. The result is that after a time all the upper-class twits who have traipsed across the pages blur into one subnormal well-bred character, and the luckless reader as often as not has no idea who someone is when they unexpectedly reappear two or three hundred pages further on.Secondly, the book is almost entirely given over to the frivolities of the Hungarian nobility. But rather than a charming portrait of a bygone age, this comes across as a tiresome soap opera that drags on and on. From time to time a bit of political yeast is chucked into the soap opera dough in the hope that it will rise, but the political input is so incoherent that a reader who is not au fait with Hungarian current affairs 110 years ago is left none the wiser, even after several readings of the stodge. In the same way pointless sub-plots of aristocratic antics which lead to nothing float in and out of the text for no apparent reason.Thirdly the author appears to be writing for his own amusement, and not to craft a work of fiction. Exhaustive descriptions of people and places add little to the atmosphere and nothing to the plot. Every writer from Chekhov to Orwell insists that brevity is the soul of wit and novelists must constantly censor themselves. It is clear that Banffy like I suppose many writers a century ago had no editor to rein in his verbosity and just spewed out whatever he felt like. He obviously had no empathy with the reader, no concern that what he was writing would be of interest to another person. His scribbling – and I suspect this work was written at great speed - is an exercise in self-indulgence, not an act of communication. He is like the sort of teacher we have all known who loves listening to the sound of his own voice but feels no compunction to communicate things which might be of value to the class.The greatest satisfaction I have gained from the reading of this tome is that by sheer will power I forced myself to get through 600 pages of this tripe rather than hurling it out of the window.

Having reached page 130 of the Everyman hardback edition I realised that I was totally lost in the sea of counts and countesses and decided to go back to the beginning and make a list of all the main characters and their relationships. After covering 3 sheets of A4 I embarked on creating a couple of family trees and found that at last things started to fall into place. Only then did I discover that the paperback edition includes a cast of characters (including 21 counts, 19 countesses and the occasional prince, duke and baron) which, had it been included in the hardback edition, would have saved me a lot of trouble.At the beginning of the hardback edition there are two maps, one of Austro-Hungary in 1913, useful for locating Transylvania within the Empire and one of Transylvania itself, identifying the major towns in Romanian, German and Hungarian. This is all but useless since Bánffy has changed the names in the novel, so we are not to know Denestornya Castle, where much of the action takes place and is described in considerable detail, is actually Bonczhida Castle, Bánffy’s ancestral home, now an incredibly sad ruin (viewable on a Youtube video), though this does receive a brief mention in the introductions to both the hardback and paperback editions. Similarly, we are not to know that Oradea, marked on the map, is given the name of Nagy-Várad in the novel. It is clear that the map has been produced by someone who has not read the novel.My next gripe concerns the translators’ decision to omit all accents from Hungarian names. For those of us with only a minimal familiarity with this most difficult of languages this makes any attempt at coming to grips with pronouncing the protagonists’ names in one’s head a hazardous business, and indeed a more thoughtful publisher might have introduced a guide to pronunciation, enabling a Szelepcsényi or a Cseresznyés to trip off the tongue.The translation is unusual in that it began as a literal translation by Bánffy’s daughter, Katalin Bánffy-Jelen, and Patrick Thursfield (who did not speak Hungarian) then turned this pretty freely into English prose, taking certain liberties on the way, such as omitting much of the political content which he felt would be lost on the English-speaking reader. It would be interesting to know the views of a Hungarian familiar with the original and the translation. My feeling is that we should be given the full text with footnotes to explain the political ramifications. It would then be up to the reader to decide whether to omit these sections.The hardback handles very pleasantly, is traditionally bound and stays open if laid on its back. The paperback has an ugly cover with particularly nasty typography.What, then, of the content? Bánffy paints a wonderful portrait of the Hungarian aristocracy in the dying years of the Austro-Hungarian empire but I confess that I found the emotional entanglements of the protagonists somewhat overwrought and the final chapters descend into sheer melodrama which I found difficult to take seriously. However I shall certainly embark on Volume 2.

I like long multi-volume novels (one of my favorites is the Balkan and Levant trilogies of Olivia Manning) so I decided to take a chance on this one. I'm only a hundred pages or so through the first of the three novels, but I would rank this is as one of the finest works of literature I've ever read. How fortunate we are that there were translators available to turn Hungarian into English! This is the story of Hungary in the last years before the First World War. With a keen sociological eye Banffy dissects the society in all its aspects, particularly the aristocracy, major and minor, all of whom are of course destined to disappear with the truncation of the country through the Treaty of Trianon in 1919. Lurking in the background is the sinister figure of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, whose plans include not merely revoking Hungary's special privileges within the Empire but expanding his reach to include all of the Balkans ("to the sea of Marmara"). Of course none of the characters know that Gavrilo Prinzip will murder the monarch before he has a chance to do any of these things. Banffy writes through a film of bitter-sweet nostalgia, enriching the narrative with many folkloric details. This is entertainment but also history in the deepest sense. I am sorry that the work will eventually end.

Set in Hungary and Transylvania which is now in Rumania but both before WW1 being in the Austro Hungarian Empire the story is slightly autobiographical and gives a fascinating insight to the wealth and power of a young aristocrat just after the turn of the century. In this year when the causes of WW1 are a fashionable theme for books, this trilogy was written by a man who was there and understood well the tensions that would ultimately cause the war and tear apart the remnants of the Holy Roman Empire.Not just for history's sake should you read this novel, it is gripping as a love story, as fortunes won and lost at the gambling tables, the corruption of petty officials. Highly entertaining and the best book I have read this year.

Please use review just sent in for Volumes 2 and 3 of this book.