The_Transylvanian_Trilogy
The Transylvanian Trilogy
Novel in three parts by Miklós Bánffy
The Transylvanian Trilogy, also called A Transylvanian Tale (Hungarian: Erdélyi történet) or The Writing on the Wall, is a novel in three parts by the Hungarian writer Miklós Bánffy, published from 1934 to 1940. The trilogy tells about the moral decline of the Hungarian nobility and the loss of (Austria-)Hungary as a nation, in the ten years preceding the outbreak of the First World War. The novel tells the story of two cousins, the socially engaged count Bálint Abády and count László Gyerőffy. Their lives are set against the background of the political events in and outside Hungary. A part of the storyline takes place on the Transylvanian Plain, the area where Bánffy himself grew up.
The trilogy appeared just before the Second World War, after which a communist regime came to power in Hungary. This regime initially gave no room for publishing a novel in which the life of the aristocracy stood so central.[citation needed] Only in the 1980s was the book published again in Hungary. The first English translation was published in 1999.[1]