Status
Available
Call number
Collection
Publication
Everyman's Library (2013), Hardcover, 696 pages
Description
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.
User reviews
LibraryThing member cameling
Life in early 1900s Hungary and Romania are dramatically portrayed through the lives of 2 cousins, Balint Abady and Laszlo Gyeroffy. While born to aristocracy, Balint is compassionate, somewhat naive and finds himself in a doomed relationship with a married woman. Laszlo is musically gifted and a
The rich details make this a wonderful epic novel. It's quietly beautiful passages are written in a style that reminds me of Tolstoy and Pasternak, and I enjoyed letting this play out like a brilliantly colorful movie in my mind. This is the first in the Transylvanian Trilogy and I am looking forward to the others.
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tortured soul. Written with dazzling detail, it took me a while to get through all names and descriptions of characters in the first chapter. The dazzling balls, shooting parties, and elaborate dinners bring out the opulence of the period among the aristocracy. The drama of personal affairs among this tight group and their fantastical life is strongly contrasted by the growing unrest on the political stage, which gives us a taste of the change that is about to come. There's a growing middle class with little patience with and great dislike and distrust of the aristocracy. The rich details make this a wonderful epic novel. It's quietly beautiful passages are written in a style that reminds me of Tolstoy and Pasternak, and I enjoyed letting this play out like a brilliantly colorful movie in my mind. This is the first in the Transylvanian Trilogy and I am looking forward to the others.
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LibraryThing member lauralkeet
They Were Counted is the first of three books in The Transylvanian Trilogy. Set in the early 1900s, it is a sprawling tale of a time and place in history, told through the lives of two young men: Balint Abady, a new member of parliament, and his cousin Laszlo Gyeroffy, a musician. Balint is clearly
Balint is very much in love with Adrienne, who is locked in an unhappy marriage. Balint quickly uncovers scars from the marriage that have made her unable to experience passion. He visits Adrienne regularly, intent on both expressing his love and helping her to once again feel what it means to love and be loved. Laszlo, meanwhile, has made a name for himself at court. He is in charge of the dancing at all of the balls, directing the musicians and keeping things moving for the guests. Laszlo also gets involved in romantic relationships, but early on he is knocked back when the family of the woman he loves rejects him. He turns to gambling to satisfy some underlying need, which has serious consequences not only for Laszlo but for many others in his circle.
Balint’s role in parliament is used as a device to cover important moments in Transylvanian history. These sections weren’t as interesting to me as those focused on high society in that period, but since I know next to nothing about this time and place, it was worthwhile to gain some historical context. [They Were Counted] was an interesting book; I was never completely “hooked,” but whenever I sat down to read I enjoyed it very much.
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of a higher class and moves easily through the myriad of balls and dinners common to his social circle. He also is responsible for significant land holdings long owned by his family. He and Laszlo are long-time friends, but it’s clear Laszlo is a peg or two down the society ladder; he’s present at many of the same balls but lacks Balint’s financial resources and political influence.Balint is very much in love with Adrienne, who is locked in an unhappy marriage. Balint quickly uncovers scars from the marriage that have made her unable to experience passion. He visits Adrienne regularly, intent on both expressing his love and helping her to once again feel what it means to love and be loved. Laszlo, meanwhile, has made a name for himself at court. He is in charge of the dancing at all of the balls, directing the musicians and keeping things moving for the guests. Laszlo also gets involved in romantic relationships, but early on he is knocked back when the family of the woman he loves rejects him. He turns to gambling to satisfy some underlying need, which has serious consequences not only for Laszlo but for many others in his circle.
Balint’s role in parliament is used as a device to cover important moments in Transylvanian history. These sections weren’t as interesting to me as those focused on high society in that period, but since I know next to nothing about this time and place, it was worthwhile to gain some historical context. [They Were Counted] was an interesting book; I was never completely “hooked,” but whenever I sat down to read I enjoyed it very much.
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LibraryThing member lucienspringer
The Transylvanian Trilogy isn’t what you think it is. Assuming you were thinking it involved vampires.
It’s natural that you might suppose so. The one thing everyone knows about Transylvania is that it’s the home of Bram Stoker’s fictional Count Dracula. Most also know that it’s an actual
But I’m not here to talk about my general ignorance, just one example of it. Or rather, one former example of it. Through an informal program of reading where one book leads accidentally to another, I have lately been traveling down the Danube into central and eastern European history, and I’ve learned a lot about Transylvania. Did you know that this region was for a thousand years, from the turn of the first millennium to the early 20th century, an essential part of Hungary? The trans-sylvan “land beyond the forest” was wide and wild, and its residents were seen as more rugged and authentic than those closer to the capital city of Budapest–it seems to have occupied much the same place in the Magyar imagination that the American West does in ours. The handing over of Transylvania to Romania in the aftermath of World War I was a devastating blow.
That national calamity is what Miklós Bánffy slowly, deliciously works his way toward in his sweeping trilogy. The individual volumes borrow their titles from the famous writing on the wall in the biblical book of Daniel, a prophecy about the collapse of a legendary kingdom–They Were Counted, They Were Found Wanting, They Were Divided–and together they describe the decline of a fascinating real place.
The story begins as a young nobleman (a Bánffy stand-in) returns from diplomatic service abroad and is flung back into the social and political Hungarian swirl. Tempted by selfish interests but dedicated to the betterment of his society, he charts a course toward the future, beset on all sides by frivolity and obliviousness. Old ladies gossip and young ladies angle to win marital competitions while generals compare mustaches and bicker pettily about their junior status in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, all unaware that their lives are about to turn upside down.
Though written in the 1930s, the trilogy is both in style and substance the last of the great 19th-century novels, grand and stately and ambitious and utterly immersive. The characters, including the upright Count Abady, the captivating Adrienne with her “flame-colored shift,” and the doomed artist Laszlo, are playthings of their omniscient author but also fully dimensional, and the set pieces they occupy will not soon be forgotten by anyone with the leisure to read them. Hunting parties, parliamentary debates, duels, intrigues, stolen moments of romance, midnight sledge rides through the snow … it’s positively sumptuous. The lush surface enraptures, but there’s also an underlying seriousness that appeals, an insistent moral drumbeat that asks What Is the Right Way to Live? There’s simply too much to this epic to do it proper justice here, so I’ll just flippantly call it a cross between Gone with the Wind and War and Peace with an added dash of paprika.
It’s natural that you might suppose so. The one thing everyone knows about Transylvania is that it’s the home of Bram Stoker’s fictional Count Dracula. Most also know that it’s an actual
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territory in Romania. That’s true now, and has been for many decades, but it’s not the whole story. We tend, or at least I do, to get stuck on a concept of world geography that was formed by the globes and maps that we used in elementary school, and think of those borders as more or less permanently fixed. Nothing could be further from the truth, of course.But I’m not here to talk about my general ignorance, just one example of it. Or rather, one former example of it. Through an informal program of reading where one book leads accidentally to another, I have lately been traveling down the Danube into central and eastern European history, and I’ve learned a lot about Transylvania. Did you know that this region was for a thousand years, from the turn of the first millennium to the early 20th century, an essential part of Hungary? The trans-sylvan “land beyond the forest” was wide and wild, and its residents were seen as more rugged and authentic than those closer to the capital city of Budapest–it seems to have occupied much the same place in the Magyar imagination that the American West does in ours. The handing over of Transylvania to Romania in the aftermath of World War I was a devastating blow.
That national calamity is what Miklós Bánffy slowly, deliciously works his way toward in his sweeping trilogy. The individual volumes borrow their titles from the famous writing on the wall in the biblical book of Daniel, a prophecy about the collapse of a legendary kingdom–They Were Counted, They Were Found Wanting, They Were Divided–and together they describe the decline of a fascinating real place.
The story begins as a young nobleman (a Bánffy stand-in) returns from diplomatic service abroad and is flung back into the social and political Hungarian swirl. Tempted by selfish interests but dedicated to the betterment of his society, he charts a course toward the future, beset on all sides by frivolity and obliviousness. Old ladies gossip and young ladies angle to win marital competitions while generals compare mustaches and bicker pettily about their junior status in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, all unaware that their lives are about to turn upside down.
Though written in the 1930s, the trilogy is both in style and substance the last of the great 19th-century novels, grand and stately and ambitious and utterly immersive. The characters, including the upright Count Abady, the captivating Adrienne with her “flame-colored shift,” and the doomed artist Laszlo, are playthings of their omniscient author but also fully dimensional, and the set pieces they occupy will not soon be forgotten by anyone with the leisure to read them. Hunting parties, parliamentary debates, duels, intrigues, stolen moments of romance, midnight sledge rides through the snow … it’s positively sumptuous. The lush surface enraptures, but there’s also an underlying seriousness that appeals, an insistent moral drumbeat that asks What Is the Right Way to Live? There’s simply too much to this epic to do it proper justice here, so I’ll just flippantly call it a cross between Gone with the Wind and War and Peace with an added dash of paprika.
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LibraryThing member albertgoldfain
The Transylvanian "War and Peace". Banffy somehow infuses Hungarian politics and banking with as much excitement as the hunting, gambling, and love scenes throughout. The alternating focus on the two cousins does not slow the momentum. The characters are all over dramatized and rigid but still come
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across as genuine. Show Less
LibraryThing member nog
This is an enjoyable read for those who like Tolstoy or Joseph Roth, especially the latter as it covers some of the same ground -- the waning days of the Austro-Hungarian empire. The locales are not limited to Transylvania, but most of the action and descriptive prose are focused thereabouts. It
I first came across this writer when researching the homeland of my maternal grandparents, who both grew up near Sibiu, which in those days was called Hermannstadt. Since they both emigrated in their late teens just a couple of years after the time frame in which the trilogy takes place, I thought it might give me some additional insights into what life there was like for them as Romanian peasants. (My grandmother was already in her 80's and lived far away from me when I was old enough to have asked her more details about the life she led on a farm, and my grandfather had passed away when I first started college -- he had been a shepherd in the mountains there.) And this book was marvelous in its descriptions of the landscape and the people living there.
Now that I have finished this part of the story, I am struck by how much the world has changed since 1905. The world my grandparents lived in as children is long gone, but books like this tell us what it was like, which is priceless. An author cannot know how his/her writing may affect a reader in ways that the author could not possibly anticipate. This book (and most likely the entire trilogy) is destined for classic status in the Hungarian canon.
One caveat: the Arcadia Press edition of this book has numerous typos, and the translators at times have awkward sentence constructs.
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pretty much leaves you hanging at the end; there are major plot lines that have yet to be resolved, so I guess I'll have to continue reading the trilogy.I first came across this writer when researching the homeland of my maternal grandparents, who both grew up near Sibiu, which in those days was called Hermannstadt. Since they both emigrated in their late teens just a couple of years after the time frame in which the trilogy takes place, I thought it might give me some additional insights into what life there was like for them as Romanian peasants. (My grandmother was already in her 80's and lived far away from me when I was old enough to have asked her more details about the life she led on a farm, and my grandfather had passed away when I first started college -- he had been a shepherd in the mountains there.) And this book was marvelous in its descriptions of the landscape and the people living there.
Now that I have finished this part of the story, I am struck by how much the world has changed since 1905. The world my grandparents lived in as children is long gone, but books like this tell us what it was like, which is priceless. An author cannot know how his/her writing may affect a reader in ways that the author could not possibly anticipate. This book (and most likely the entire trilogy) is destined for classic status in the Hungarian canon.
One caveat: the Arcadia Press edition of this book has numerous typos, and the translators at times have awkward sentence constructs.
Show Less
LibraryThing member Castlelass
“How simple everything could seem if one looked only at the figures, those cold statistics that took no account of people's feelings and traditions…What of the myriad individual characteristics, passions, aspirations, triumphs and disappointments that together made one people different from
Published in 1934, this book covers a wide swath of Hungarian and Romanian history. It is set in 1905 in Transylvania, which was then part of Austro-Hungarian Empire and is now in Romania. Protagonist Count Balint Abády lives in castle Denestornya, his family’s estate, in the countryside near Kolozsvár. He is part of the upper class and an elected official in Parliament. He is in love with Adrienne, an unhappily married woman. His cousin, Count László Gyeroffy, is in love with the beautiful Klara Kollonich, but his habitual gambling comes between them. It is a sweeping saga of society, love, and the political situation in Austria-Hungary at the time.
There are many characters in this book, but the main storyline focuses on a few, and these few are well-developed. The pace is a bit slow at the start but becomes steady once the characters are introduced. The perspective is third person omniscient, so the reader is privy to their inner thoughts. There are many miscommunications, people out for revenge, duels, hunting parties, balls, gossip, horse races, political intrigue, servants delivering private messages, romantic liaisons, trips abroad, and ventures into rural areas where we see how people of lesser means are living. It portrays the lead-up to WWI and how warning signs were ignored, while the upper classes continued their lavish lifestyles.
This book is wonderfully written. Count Abády is a particularly well-crafted character – he lives by an honor code, wants to help the people living on his land, and struggles with his shortcomings. It is easy to picture the social gatherings – which apparently lasted all night and broke up in the early hours of the morning. It contains beautiful descriptions of the countryside.
“As Balint stood there, motionless, rapt in a new sense of delight and exaltation, seven fallow deer appeared slowly from a group of pines. They were wading knee-high through the morning haze, two does with their fawns and three young females, and if they saw Balint they did not take any notice of him but just walked quietly and sedately on until, after a few moments, they disappeared again into the shadow of the trees. Their sudden appearance in the distance in front of him, and just as sudden disappearance a moment or two later contributed strongly to Balint's sense of wonder and enchantment.”
This book would make a great mini-series. It reminded me of a Hungarian/Romanian version of Downton Abbey. It provides an opportunity to learn about the history of Transylvania in an entertaining manner without the gothic overtones normally attributed to the area. Though it is lengthy at around 700 pages, I was always anxious to pick it up.
4.5
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another? How could anyone ignore all the different threads of experience that, over the centuries, had formed and deepened the differences that distinguished each nation?”Published in 1934, this book covers a wide swath of Hungarian and Romanian history. It is set in 1905 in Transylvania, which was then part of Austro-Hungarian Empire and is now in Romania. Protagonist Count Balint Abády lives in castle Denestornya, his family’s estate, in the countryside near Kolozsvár. He is part of the upper class and an elected official in Parliament. He is in love with Adrienne, an unhappily married woman. His cousin, Count László Gyeroffy, is in love with the beautiful Klara Kollonich, but his habitual gambling comes between them. It is a sweeping saga of society, love, and the political situation in Austria-Hungary at the time.
There are many characters in this book, but the main storyline focuses on a few, and these few are well-developed. The pace is a bit slow at the start but becomes steady once the characters are introduced. The perspective is third person omniscient, so the reader is privy to their inner thoughts. There are many miscommunications, people out for revenge, duels, hunting parties, balls, gossip, horse races, political intrigue, servants delivering private messages, romantic liaisons, trips abroad, and ventures into rural areas where we see how people of lesser means are living. It portrays the lead-up to WWI and how warning signs were ignored, while the upper classes continued their lavish lifestyles.
This book is wonderfully written. Count Abády is a particularly well-crafted character – he lives by an honor code, wants to help the people living on his land, and struggles with his shortcomings. It is easy to picture the social gatherings – which apparently lasted all night and broke up in the early hours of the morning. It contains beautiful descriptions of the countryside.
“As Balint stood there, motionless, rapt in a new sense of delight and exaltation, seven fallow deer appeared slowly from a group of pines. They were wading knee-high through the morning haze, two does with their fawns and three young females, and if they saw Balint they did not take any notice of him but just walked quietly and sedately on until, after a few moments, they disappeared again into the shadow of the trees. Their sudden appearance in the distance in front of him, and just as sudden disappearance a moment or two later contributed strongly to Balint's sense of wonder and enchantment.”
This book would make a great mini-series. It reminded me of a Hungarian/Romanian version of Downton Abbey. It provides an opportunity to learn about the history of Transylvania in an entertaining manner without the gothic overtones normally attributed to the area. Though it is lengthy at around 700 pages, I was always anxious to pick it up.
4.5
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Subjects
Language
Original language
Hungarian
Original publication date
1934
Physical description
696 p.
ISBN
0375712291 / 9780375712296