An extraordinary portrait of the vanished world of pre-1914 Hungary. The first volume of Banffy's trilogy, rediscovered after the fall of communism in Hungary.
Hungarian Classic and winner of the 2002 Oxford Weidenfeld translation Prize, now re-edited and re-issued.
Although comparisons with Lampedusa's novel
The Leopard are inevitable, Banffy's work is perhaps nearer in feel to that of Joseph Roth, in
The Radetzky March. They were, after all, mourning the fall of the same empire