![]() ![]() In the introduction Watson asserts that ‘he key to the tragic course of the continent’s modern history lies in this region, and in the extraordinary exertion, unredeemed sacrifices and physical and moral displacement undergone by its people in 1914–18’. ![]() (1) This massive ancestral castle of the Banffy family in Transylvania was gutted and largely destroyed by Nazi troops shortly after Banffy wrote those words.Īlexander Watson’s compelling synthesis of the Central Powers in the First World War locates itself in the flux of Central and Eastern European history, in particular highlighting the links to later traumatic events such as the Holocaust, population displacement and official repression. ![]() The novel ends with the telling words ‘Bonczhida, May 20 th, 1940’. It is a personal and private farewell to his childhood home and to a whole generation of Hungarian nobles, of which Balint/Banffy was highly critical. ![]() At the end of Miklos Banffy’s entertaining panoramic novel of pre-WWI Hungary, the protagonist Count Balint takes a final tour of Transylvania before joining his regiment. ![]()
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