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Miklós Bánffy
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They Were Counted (Transylvanian Trilogy) Paperback – 7 Aug. 2008

by Miklos Banffy (Author), Patrick Thursfield (Translator), Countess Banffy-Jelen (Translator)
4.3 out of 5 stars 329 ratings
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.
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  1. Book 1 of 3
    The Transylvania Trilogy
  2. Print length
    596 pages
  3. Language
    English
  4. Publisher
    Arcadia Books
  5. Publication date
    7 Aug. 2008
  6. Dimensions
    13.34 x 5.72 x 19.69 cm
  7. ISBN-10
    190514797X
  8. ISBN-13
    978-1905147977
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Product description

Review

'A genuine case of a rediscovered classic. The force of Banffy's enthusiasm produces an effect rather like that of the best Trollope novels - but coming from a past world that now seems excitingly exotic' - TLS 'Banffy is a born storyteller' - Patrick Leigh Fermor'A very romantic book set in Transylvania during the days of the Austro-Hungarian Empire before the First World war. It's full of balls and hunting parties, snow and politics. It's totally absorbing and I'm looking forward ti reading the next two books in the trilogy' - Martha Kearney (Newsnight BBC Two, The World at One Radio 4), My Six Best Books, Daily Express'One of the most celebrated and ambitious classics of Hungarian literature' - Jan Morris'This epic Hungarian novel, absorbing both for its exploration of human nature and its study of the decline of the Austro-Hungarian Empire... weaves social and political themes into Banffy's powerful tale' - Daily Telegraph'A masterpiece. This very readable translation makes a wonderful book accessible to many more people' - New Statesman'My great find of the year is a reprint of the magnificent trilogy, set in pre-war Transylvania by Miklos Banffy...which stands comparison with the great Russian and French masters. Banffy vies with Tolstoy for sweep, Pasternak for romance and Tolstoy for evocation of nature; his fiction is packed with irresistible social detail and crammed with suberb characters: it is gloriously, addictively, compulsively readable' - Caroline Moor, Books of the Year, Seven

About the Author

Miklos Banffy (1873-1950) was variously a diplomat, MP and foreign minister in 1921/22 when he signed the peace treaty with the United States and obtained Hungary's admission to the League of Nations. He was responsible for organizing the last Habsburg coronation, that of King Karl in 1916. His famous Transylvanian Trilogy, They Were Counted, They Were Found Wanting, They Were Divided was first published in Budapest in the 1930s.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Arcadia Books
  • Publication date ‏ : ‎ 7 Aug. 2008
  • Edition ‏ : ‎ Translation
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Print length ‏ : ‎ 596 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 190514797X
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1905147977
  • Item weight ‏ : ‎ 658 g
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 13.34 x 5.72 x 19.69 cm
  • Book 1 of 3 ‏ : ‎ The Transylvania Trilogy
  • Best Sellers Rank: 1,429,981 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • Customer reviews:
    4.3 out of 5 stars 329 ratings

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Miklós Bánffy

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4.3 out of 5 stars
329 global ratings

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Customers say

Customers find this historical novel fascinating, with one review noting how it weaves together tales of young men. The book features many characters and is beautifully written, with one customer highlighting its fantastic descriptions of scenery.

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RomanceReadabilityCharacter varietyPacing
13 customers mention ‘Romance’13 positive0 negative

Customers enjoy the romance in the book, finding it fascinating and full of intrigue, with one customer describing it as a wonderful evocation of a lost era.

"...Fascinating." Read more

"...it to any of my friends and family who love deep, rich, complex novels...." Read more

"This book is quite special...." Read more

"...many which is why it is so difficult to put down because there is so much suspense and one just has to keep turning the pages to find out what is..." Read more

9 customers mention ‘Readability’9 positive0 negative

Customers find the book readable, with one mentioning they are still reading it.

"This trilogy is absolutely superb...." Read more

"An amazing book. When you see the size of the book it is a bit intimidating, but every page is interesting...." Read more

"A jolly good read. Two great tales weave together of young men and their love against the turmoil of a country trying to free itself...." Read more

"Era evoking and complicated and emotionally tangled. It is a good read but requires application. I faded a little at the end." Read more

5 customers mention ‘Character variety’5 positive0 negative

Customers appreciate the variety of characters in the book.

"This trilogy is absolutely superb. It creates memorable characters and gives a vivid picture of the situation of Hungarian ruled Transylvania the..." Read more

"...print edition, rather than reading on Kindle, as there is a huge cast of characters and the print edition has a Who's Who at the beginning which is..." Read more

"...There are many characters who weave in and out of the story...." Read more

"...to enable a better understanding of the history and identity of the many characters involved." Read more

5 customers mention ‘Pacing’5 positive0 negative

Customers appreciate the pacing of the book, with several noting its beautiful writing style, and one customer highlighting its fantastic descriptions of scenery and psychological depth.

"Thoughtful, beautifully written" Read more

"...been recommending it to any of my friends and family who love deep, rich, complex novels...." Read more

"...This is set in the rich glossy world of the upper class in Europe at the end of the century...." Read more

"A bit too much politics, but fantastic descriptions of the scenery and a gripping love story. Reminded me of Joseph Roth's Radetzky March." Read more

Top reviews from United Kingdom

  • Marian
    5.0 out of 5 stars The first of a great trilogy of novels
    Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 22 June 2017
    Verified Purchase
    I first read the Miklos Banffy trilogy two years ago on my Kindle, and loved it so much I have been recommending it to any of my friends and family who love deep, rich, complex novels. It made such an impression on me that I recently ordered print copies of all three books, and immediately started from the beginning again. A second reading does not disappoint! The historic setting is fascinating and detailed, written by someone who was there and a part of it - a Hungarian aristocrat whose ancestral home was in Transylvania writing about the Hungarian aristocracy in Transylvania and Budapest in the ten years before the First World War, lovingly recreating the balls, the hunting parties, the life in the country, including the Romanian peasant way of life in the forests, the political struggles in the city, the gambling, duelling and drinking. One strand of the narrative is about the failure of the political class to see what was coming, and to take any interest in the changes outside the Austro-Hungarian Empire which would result in its dismemberment after 1918. Another strand is about the love affairs of the two cousins, Balint and Laszlo, at the centre of the novel, which are portrayed with real psychological depth. Banffy must have had personal knowledge of someone with a fatal addiction, and also seen at close hand someone with violent mental delusions, because he portrays these with a detail and compassion that you rarely find in novels about this period.
    I recommend buying the print edition, rather than reading on Kindle, as there is a huge cast of characters and the print edition has a Who's Who at the beginning which is easy to turn back to when you lose track of them. It also has 'Then and Now' maps of Central Europe to assist modern readers place the action, but I wish it also had a Historical Note to help us through the political history of the region. (You can still enjoy the novels even if you skip some of the narrative about the political struggles.)
    7 people found this helpful
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  • Tony W
    4.0 out of 5 stars A splendid book.
    Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 7 November 2018
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    This book is quite special. Written by a polymath, Count Miklos Banffy, it is both a gripping story and also describes the many facets of life in Transylvania between 1906 and the early 1920s - in 3 volumes, of which this is the first. Romance, estate management, travels mostly involving horses, fraud, morality.... my only small gripe in this instance is that I am reading the Kindle version while on a month's travelling - and the Kindle version is choc a bloc with typos. It should be better.
    2 people found this helpful
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  • H. M. Sykes
    5.0 out of 5 stars This has all the ingredients of a successful novel and I cannot put it down! It is wrecking my work.
    Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 25 November 2013
    Verified Purchase
    I bought this because my father gave me books two and three (he had bought them for a friend who already had them). The setting is apparantly vaguely autobiographical, the nobility of Hungary and Rumania at the beginning of the 20th Century before the implosion of the Austro-Hungarian Empire which was caused by the 1st World War.

    We get through this book to live in a life of unbelievable splendour, huge palaces and castles, estates of thousands of hectares, affairs, unrequited love, parties where the dancing was frenetic and gave brief moments for unmarried romance, rarely ceasing before dawn. Fortunes made and lost in the Casino at cards. Duels, shooting, hunting, high politics, music. We meet glamorous countesses, princesses, even the Royal Family and learn about the world of the rich and privileged and the marriage market where, as was happening in Great Britain at this time, a long lineage and a title were traded for a handsome dowry if no marriage of equals could be found.

    The cast list is quite long and the sub-plots are many which is why it is so difficult to put down because there is so much suspense and one just has to keep turning the pages to find out what is happening. The introductions by Paddy Fermor and the translators are fascinating in themselves. I considered myself fairly well read but I had no idea of quite what a magnificent lifestyle these aristocrats had. I assume that survived the First War and only came to an end with Soviet occupation but I am now absolutely hooked on the region and the wealth that existed there.

    This really ranks as a superb novel, every bit as good as Tolstoy but more modern (and just as long).
    8 people found this helpful
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  • cc murray-philipson
    5.0 out of 5 stars They were divided
    Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 9 September 2023
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    An amazing book. When you see the size of the book it is a bit intimidating, but every page is interesting. And I could not re commend this book more . Everyone I know who has read it feels the same way.

    Nini. MUrray-philipson
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  • M Ellel
    5.0 out of 5 stars They were counted
    Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 11 November 2013
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    A jolly good read. Two great tales weave together of young men and their love against the turmoil of a country trying to free itself. This is set in the rich glossy world of the upper class in Europe at the end of the century. Slightly old fashioned, but we'll described with some lovely background details of Hungary and Romania.
    One person found this helpful
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  • kelty
    4.0 out of 5 stars Lots of names
    Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 30 March 2023
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    Era evoking and complicated and emotionally tangled. It is a good read but requires application. I faded a little at the end.
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  • Kindle Customer
    5.0 out of 5 stars Amazing
    Reviewed in Australia on 26 April 2021
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    An amazing book describing the lives of the Hungarian aristocracy in Transylvania before WW1 and charting the last days of the Austro Hungarian empire. Based on the personal experience of the author it has a cast of thousands and quite unlike anything else I have read.
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  • Miguel Ángel Arnedo Orbañanos
    2.0 out of 5 stars Una gran novela estropeada por los muchos errores de imprenta de esta edición
    Reviewed in Spain on 14 June 2022
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    Un magnífico fresco de la alta sociedad húngara de principios del siglo XX. La recreación de los bailes, cacerías y, en general, el modo de vivir de la aristocracia húngara al comienzo de ese siglo es excepcional. Los sentimientos amorosos y las relaciones afectivas resultan ahora un poco cursis, pero sin duda reflejan la situación de la época, sorprendiendo a veces la liberalidad de algunos comportamientos extramaritales (probablemente derivada de los matrimonios arreglados). La galería de personajes es muy amplia y permite la descripción de un abanico muy amplio de personalidades. La parte dedicada a la política es, al menos para mí, más difícil de seguir, pero ofrece suficiente información como para hacerse una idea de que los tiempos no cambian tanto en esta faceta de la vida.
    El único y muy grave problema que tiene este libro son las abundantes e inexplicables erratas de imprenta que dificultan su lectura (sobre todo para quienes, como yo, no tenemos el inglés como lengua materna. Lo peor son
    las dudas que planean sobre la interpretación que uno pueda hacer cada vez que no entiende una frase o el significado de una palabra y tiene que buscar las posibles letras que faltan
    o sobran para encontrar un sentido a lo que lee. En muchos casos se trata de un error recurrente por lo que, a mi entender, existe un grave problema derivado de una mala o ausente corrección de pruebas. En cualquier
    caso, no creo que deba ponerse a la venta una novela con tantos errores de impresión.
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  • Dan Harlow
    5.0 out of 5 stars A beautiful and tragically overlooked masterpiece
    Reviewed in the United States on 11 July 2014
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    Imagine an entire nation overflowing with people who completely and totally misunderstand everyone else around them. No matter what you say it will be interpreted in the worst possible way and absolutely counter to what you really meant. On top of that, add in the fact that should you try to be serious about something, should you try to get a point across to a large group or attempt to 'better' a situation that seems out of control or corrupt, you are immediately teased, poked fun of, laughed at, and not taken the slightest bit seriously.

    Now do all that in Hungarian, a language nobody outside of Hungary can hope to comprehend, and put that nation in the middle of a geographical tinderbox of ethnic diversity, mistrust, and at the crossroads of division where east meets west, old meets new, and more powerful neighbors squeeze in tighter ever year. Only then can we hope to understand the sadly comedic history of Hungary and why she always seemed to pick the wrong side of a war to fight on.

    The title of this book - and the whole series which is called 'The Writing on the Wall' outside of Hungary - gives us our most important key to understanding what we are about to read and experience in this novel. The Writing on the Wall is from the Book of Daniel in the Bible and has become an expression for being able to see how events are going to unfold before they happen. Yet what we tend to forget from the story in the Bible is when the writing on the wall appeared to King Belshazzar it was unreadable. King Belshazzar had to call in an interpreter to make sense of the words "Mene, Mene, Tekel, Upharsin". So even though the writing was right there on the wall for everyone to see, nobody knew what the heck it meant.

    And that's the sad joke Bánffy is all too painfully aware of when he wrote this beautiful and tragically overlooked masterpiece.

    The novel begins in 1904, the year the Hungarian Parliament building was completed by an architect who went blind before finishing the project. Over the coming years that take place in this the first book of three everyone in that building goes figuratively blind. The political situation in Hungary is a mess, factions who favor their alliance with Austria fight with those who want nothing to do with Austria, and factions within those groups fight with each other.

    One would wonder if perhaps this was Austria's plan all along: to divide and conquer. However, the Hungarians are far more adept at dividing and conquering themselves than the Austrians could ever hope for.

    It's important to take a quick step back and say that this novel is first and foremost a political one even though it does not seem so. Miklós Bánffy has created a work of art in an attempt to explain what went wrong in Hungary - or might even systemically be the problem with Hungary for all of her troubled history - during the years leading up to WW1. Each character, though wholly original, fleshed out, and rarely cliched, does serve a larger role that explores the many facets of Hungarian culture at that time in history. And what is genius here, what makes this novel a masterpiece of fiction that can only be rivaled by War and Peace, is that Miklós Bánffy never forces the issue. He lets these characters live and breathe and surprise us and while they may not rise to the level of psychological realism that Tolstoy found in his great novels, Bánffy has a stronger grasp of ALL the people of his country, ALL of Hungary, and especially his province of Transylvania.

    Tolstoy's one weakness was that he never could really write a character from a lower class than from himself. Tolstoy, try as he might, pray as he might, work as hard in the fields as he might, was never able to get inside the mind of a peasant. And we should be lucky he wasn't able to either, because had he never longed to be a hard working, simple, plain, struggling human being, we never would have got the great works of art he left behind. His art was his struggle to be a better, more humble person.

    Miklós Bánffy, unlike Tolstoy, did understand people of a different class than his - especially the poor. He understood without even thinking about it how the most senior politician thought and behaved, how the nobility behaved, how young women behave, and how peasants behave.

    In one scene we get a series of events between the lady of the house, her butler, a young serving girl, and one of our main characters, a socialite named Laszlo. Over the course of this particular chapter we learn (through some clues from earlier in the book) that the lady of the house has put all her household trust in her butler. That butler, we learn, abuses the staff and forces the young maids who work under him to have sex with him. These young women get pregnant by him, and he forces them out into the street by blaming a third party. This young woman, we learn, cannot go home because of her situation but also because of the trust that had been placed in her by her family to find work. She is shamed not only because she is pregnant out of wedlock, but because she is no longer even employed. And the blame goes to our main character, Laszlo, who had only used her as an intermediary to deliver a message to the women he loves who is the daughter of the lady of the house.

    Now all this might seem a bit complicated and even a bit dramatic, but what Bánffy is doing is constantly giving us a close look at his society, at the culture of his beloved country. These are the people he loves and he loves them all, good and bad of them. The fact he understands them AND can write so well about them is a gift that has been left to us but that has nearly been forgotten.

    Miklós Bánffy is an interesting historical figure. He, like Tolstoy, was nobility. In fact the Bánffy's are some of the most ancient and were one of the most powerful families in all of Hungary and Transylvania. He was a politician who was involved in many of the most important moments in history and he was an artist.

    After WW1 Bánffy retired (somewhat) from politics and focused mainly on his writing and this is when he wrote these novels. He was looking back to a time when his countrymen had been so preoccupied with their own silly affairs, with money, power, self-satisfaction, glory, that they missed all the warning signs that the world around them was going to hell. And his novel is also a reaction to what he saw going on around him as he started writing with the rise of Hitler and his country once again choosing the wrong side of another world war.

    He writes, "The feast had been prepared so knowingly that it seemed to Laszlo that everyone present ate and drank more voraciously than usual and chatted with more hectic vivacity, as if they were driven to enjoy themselves while there was still time."

    Yet all around there are hints of decay and neglect or unsettling surprises. A fish that normally is served with bones is somehow served without bones in it, dirty towels lay on the floor where others had used them to dry off, a servant is far more muscular than expected when his arm is grasped. Yet nobody wants to say anything about all this. Nobody wants to be the person who points out any irregularities because they will be mocked. The few who do speak up are washed up old drunks who fall over and urinate themselves while crying for old Hungary.

    One character, a successful and respected gambler, almost completely communicates with his monocle. When he makes up his mind about some affair, when he has decided on how things will be settled and seen, he imperceptibly twitches his eye to allow the monocle to drop from his eye as a sign that affairs are over and that 'that is that, gentlemen!'. By choosing to impair his vision, he judges how things will be seen.

    How Bánffy manages to pull this off is quite a feat and makes reading this novel such a pleasure. His best talent is in handling all the different characters. In the scene with the maid I described above, we do not get the point of view of only one character or an omniscient narrator, but rather Bánffy allows the characters to orbit each other and when one comes close to the other we immediately yet effortlessly switch points of view. We go from the lady of the house and what she is thinking, to the butler, to one of the upper maids, to the poor maid who is kicked out and then on to Laszlo, with whom the chapter began.

    Time, too, does not always flow in one direction.

    In another scene we learn that one character has been engaged to the former lover of another. We then jump back a week to tell how this was arranged, then go forward to a party where we meet up with the character who has been spurned by this news but now from the point of view of the other woman who then tells us how all this was put together a few days before.

    The effect of all this jumping about is that Bánffy builds a world in which life is happening all the time, not just when we are reading that particular page.

    Our other main character, Baliant (who is a near stand in for Bánffy), is trying to better the lives of the people who live on his family's land (sounds like Tolstoy, no?). Yet every time he goes back into the mountains to meet with these people he is thwarted by events that have been going on while he was far away in Budapest. Just because the noble land owner is away does not mean life suddenly stops and Bánffy is constantly using the back and forth of time and the orbiting motion of the intersecting characters to give us a greater sense of a larger world, a world in conflict as well as of beauty.

    But is this novel nostalgic?

    Nostalgia can be a killer because it is a dishonest emotion that colors reality and takes us out of real events and real people's loves. Nostalgia is false because it never happened and it can cheat a reader of learning something important about the world we live in and about who we are as human beings. Nostalgia is a longing for a return to a time that never existed. The world he writes about most certainly did exist, and so much of it was rotten.

    This is not a nostalgic novel.

    Bánffy paints Hungary with all the colors of nature, he lets us listen to all the sounds of the horses and the birds, "Outside a nightingale sang in almost crazed ecstasy", and even smells - one scene describes a poor peasant boy standing in a room filled with the smell of sawdust as the child eats a ripe apple. Color is his most used descriptor, be it the cushions in a room or in Parliament, the blues of the distant, floating mountains, or even "the purple darkness of desire".

    All this might seem overly nostalgic, too, however, let's not forget that to this very day we can go see the uniform Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria was assassinated in and see his red bloodstain still on his uniform. It's still there 100 years later.

    And like that assassination which took place in the very empire Bánffy is writing about, the past he writes about is not something anyone would be nostalgic for. Bánffy, though he loves his nation, knew that he and his countrymen did not see or interpret the writing on the wall. He is not nostalgic to return to a time where so many suffered, where just off stage men like Gavrilo Princip were starving and angry and ready to kill to make a change in their lives.

    Bánffy was all to aware of the suffering of that time, and though he would have loved to have remained a gentle noble with all his lands - the Nazi's destroyed his family castle because Bánffy attempted to get Hungary to switch sides in WW2 and join the Allies - he was well aware of the pain of all the people of his country and he is not nostalgic for any such thing.

    Bánffy has written a warning for all of us to be more aware of the people around us, the cultures we must learn to get along with, the people in our lives whose lives we effect for good and for bad, sometimes without even realizing it or knowing they are also influencing us, even behind our backs. He, like Daniel in the Bible, has translated the writing on the wall and this novel is his interpretation of what was written for Hungary right before WW1.

    I must add that I believe this novel to be one of the greatest works of literature ever created. This novel, for me, stands next to War and Peace, Moby Dick, and Ulysses and it deserves to be read by every person alive. Yet like the literal Writing on the Wall, few people have seen it or will ever know about it.

    And perhaps that's the way it should be. Most people are plenty happy going on with their lives and not concerning themselves with the greater problems of the world because to be one of the few who can read the writing on the wall means you are probably still powerless to do anything about it.

    Bánffy paid for not reading the writing on the wall when, in his 70's, he watched the Nazi's tear down his family home.
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  • Feichtinger
    5.0 out of 5 stars An epic novel about a world gone by
    Reviewed in Germany on 8 August 2014
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    This book gives a fantastic view of the vanished world of Hungarian nobility before the first world war, written by a man who - as coming from one of the most eminent families - was part of it but in spite of that fact is an impartial and objective observer though his story is tinted with the nostalgy for a world gone by. Miklos Banffy who also for a short time after the first world war was also Minister of foreign affairs of his Country, writes a beautiful prose and this novel which is part of a trilogy brings back to life one of the most dramatic periods of the history of central Europe. The intricacy of the plot, the psychological description of its acting persons somehow reminds one of a Tolstoi novel. One reason more to read this book is the fact that it was translated into English by Patrick Leigh Fermor who is one of the best English writers of his time. For me an additional reason is the fact that my grandfather Comes from Transylvania and I could recognize some of his stories.
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  • Maria Rosell
    3.0 out of 5 stars in very good condition but considerably late
    Reviewed in Germany on 12 April 2022
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    in very good condition but considerably late
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