They Were Counted

They Were Counted, the first novel in The Transylvanian Trilogy, introduces us to a decadent, frivolous, and corrupt society unwittingly bent on its own destruction during the last years of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

Bánffy's lush depiction of an opulent lost paradise focuses on two upper-class cousins who couldn't be more different: Count Balint Abády, a liberal politician who compassionately defends his homeland's downtrodden Romanian peasants, and his dissipated cousin László, whose life is a whirl of parties, balls, hunting, and gambling.

They Were Counted launches a story that brims with intrigues, love affairs, duels, murder, comedy, and tragedy, set against the rugged and ravishing scenery of Transylvania. Along with the other two novels in the trilogy--They Were Found Wanting and They Were Divided--it combines a Proustian nostalgia for the past, insight into a collapsing empire reminiscent of the work of Joseph Roth, and the drama and epic sweep of Tolstoy.