They Were Divided

Perfect late night reading JAN MORRIS

Banffy is a born storyteller PATRICK LEIGH FERMOR

Totally absorbing MARTHA KEARNEY

So evocative SIMON JENKINS

The final volume of Miklos Banffy’s panoramic trilogy of the dying years of the Habsburg empire.

They Were Divided reflects the rapidly disintegrating course of events in Central Europe. In the foreground once again the lives of Balint, with his ultimately unhappy love for Adrienne, and his fatally flawed cousin, Laszlo Gyeroffy, who dies in poverty and neglect, are told with humour and a bitter-sweet nostalgia for a paradise lost through folly.

The sinister and fast moving events in Montenegro, the Balkan wars, the apparent encirclement of Germany and Austria-Hungary by Britain, France and Russia, and finally the assassination of Franz Ferdinand all lead inexorably to the youth of Hungary marching off to their death and the dismemberment of their once great country.

Volume three of the epic, sweeping and wholly immersive trilogy that began with They Were Counted, and continued with They Were Found Wanting.

Translated from the Hungarian by Patrick Thursfield and Katalin Banffy-Jelen

With a Foreword by Patrick Leigh-Fermor

WINNER OF THE WEIDENFELD TRANSLATION PRIZE