Miklos Bánffy's Transylvanian Trilogy

Michael Henderson writes an appreciation of Milos Bánffy’s Transylvanian Trilogy in The Telegraph:

There are many strands to the story, a lot of politics and many names, but don’t be put off by that. It isn’t necessary to be an expert in Middle European and Balkan affairs at the turn of the last century to savour the book. You simply have to recognise a powerful tale and trust the strong human impulses of the men and women who Bánffy brings thrillingly to life.

The most famous evocation of the doomed old order can be found, of course, within Proust’s vast novel—though À la recherche concerns itself with many other things. Whereas Proust explores what he called “the unknown, incalculable colourings of an unsuspected world”, the aesthetic experience of life and art filtered through the transforming prism of memory, Bánffy’s work is flesh and blood. It is about men of action (and inaction) and things felt deeply.

Those wacky British. Publishing articles about literature in translation, even though it’s been 7 or 8 years since the books were published, like they have a real interest in books. What a country!

It appears that the trilogy is only available through online retailers in the US, as nobody has bothered to publish the trilogy here.

Via Dispatches from Zembla.