{"product_id":"the-enchanted-night-isbn-9781782275923","title":"The Enchanted Night","description":"\u003cb\u003eTransporting stories of intrigue, superstition and rivalry from a European master, in English for the first time\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn this stark, haunting collection, Miklós Bánffy narrates with wry wisdom stories of cunning, betrayal and myth ranging from classical antiquity to the Transylvania of his own day. These are communities of sharp rivalries and religious superstition: young Borbálka, about to marry an unsuitable man, receives strange counsel from a suspicious figure in her village; four men seek to exploit the captive Gavrila Lung for money, while mountain wolves howl in the distance; when Old Damaskin betrays his stepson to hold on to his land, his wife extracts bizarre revenge.\u003cbr\u003eTranslated into English for the first time by the award-winning Len Rix, this collection further establishes Bánffy as one of the foremost European writers of the twentieth century.'The Tolstoy of Transylvania... Bánffy's trilogy is just about as good as any fiction I have ever read.' - \u003cb\u003eCharles Moore, \u003ci\u003eDaily Telegraph \u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003ci\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e'The elegiac wisdom of his writing makes him one of those people whose life you wish could have ended in something other than calamity... a great storyteller.' \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003e- Guardian \u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e'A genuine case of a rediscovered classic. The force of Bánffy's enthusiasm produces an effect rather like that of the best Trollope novels, but coming from a past world that now seems excitingly exotic.' \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003e- Times Literary Supplement \u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e'Bánffy's masterpiece resembles Proust, [yet] he writes with all the psychological acumen of Dostoevsky.' \u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003e- The  London Magazine\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e'Hungary's Tolstoy.' - \u003ci\u003e\u003cb\u003eStandpoint\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/i\u003eMiklós Bánffy was born Count Miklós Bánffy de Losoncz in Hungary in 1873. Over the course of his life he studied law, wrote plays, novels and stories, and became a groundbreaking set designer, an accomplished cartoonist, a politician and a diplomat.\u003cbr\u003eA leading figure in the Transylvanian Hungarian community, in 1943 he urged the Romanian government to cut ties with the German side in the Second World War; two years later, a retreating German army looted his estate. He stayed in Transylvania after it was invaded by the Soviet Red Army, and, emaciated and penniless, reunited with his family in Budapest in 1949. He died a year later.WOLVES\u003cbr\u003e It was winter. Thick snow covered the mountains and\u003cbr\u003e valleys of Transylvania. It had left tall round shepherd’s caps\u003cbr\u003e on the circular Vlach huts, turning them from black mushrooms\u003cbr\u003e into white. It had draped its soft white coat over the mountain\u003cbr\u003e slopes, sprinkled the forests with a mica-like glitter, settled thick\u003cbr\u003e on the mud and frozen clods and transformed the fields around\u003cbr\u003e the River Maros into a sea of blinding white.\u003cbr\u003e Everything so white, so utterly, inexpressibly white.\u003cbr\u003e Only on the Hungarian side, all the way down to the Maros,\u003cbr\u003e was the never-ending whiteness ripped apart. In almost every\u003cbr\u003e village blackened roof beams poked out through the snow.\u003cbr\u003e Scorched and dying poplars thrust their branches into the sky\u003cbr\u003e like enormous black brooms. The walls of once-grand houses\u003cbr\u003e and mansions, their sides besmirched by fire, criss-crossed each\u003cbr\u003e other at strange angles on the ruined street corners, abandoned\u003cbr\u003e to the empty silence. As if intent on claiming everything, the\u003cbr\u003e snow had poured into the gardens and roofless rooms alike,\u003cbr\u003e scattering its fine dust under any vaulting that had not collapsed.\u003cbr\u003e But despite its best efforts, on the floors of the houses and out\u003cbr\u003e in the gardens, mysterious dark-red stains had welled up, stains\u003cbr\u003e that had remained slippery underfoot. The snow had blanketed\u003cbr\u003e everything under its immaculate whiteness, but these dark red\u003cbr\u003e stains resisted every onslaught. No sooner were they covered over\u003cbr\u003e than they appeared again.\u003cbr\u003e Among the scorched and trampled evergreens of what had\u003cbr\u003e once been gardens and in the stubble fields beyond, fresh burial\u003cbr\u003e mounds had risen. Stray dogs prowled around them, snarling and\u003cbr\u003e bickering as they scratched at the soil. Crows swirled above in a\u003cbr\u003e vast cloud, cawing loudly.\u003cbr\u003e There was a horror in the wintry silence, a silence more\u003cbr\u003e profound than in any previous winter. It was as if life itself had\u003cbr\u003e been somehow diminished; as if there were fewer people now\u003cbr\u003e alive than in the past.\u003cbr\u003e It was a terrifyingly silent winter, the winter that followed the\u003cbr\u003e Hora Peasant Uprising.\u003cbr\u003e The snows had brought out the wolves. They now roamed\u003cbr\u003e down from the forests towards the wintry villages, ever closer to\u003cbr\u003e the isolated farmsteads and settlements. At first they came singly\u003cbr\u003e or in pairs; then, as the winter tightened and extended its grip,\u003cbr\u003e there were more and more of them, in ever larger packs.\u003cbr\u003e They roamed in the greying light of evening and late into\u003cbr\u003e the night, trotting steadily around the edges of the forests, one\u003cbr\u003e behind the other, their heads down, in complete silence – perfectly\u003cbr\u003e anonymous-looking predators. At first glance you might have\u003cbr\u003e thought they were grey, dirty Komondors, the huge dogs used\u003cbr\u003e by the shepherds. They would squat at the edge of the woods,\u003cbr\u003e unmoving, as dogs do, and wait – wait with menacing patience\u003cbr\u003e for the darkness of night.\u003cbr\u003e They attacked only at night. There would be scarcely a sound,\u003cbr\u003e but by morning half a dozen ewes would be missing, with nothing\u003cbr\u003e left of them but large bloodstains in the snow. The wolves\u003cbr\u003e plundered everywhere, always in the dark of night, stealthily, like\u003cbr\u003e craven thieves. Attempts to guard the farms and the flocks proved\u003cbr\u003e fruitless. The strong, brave Kuvasz dogs set to guard them could\u003cbr\u003e do nothing: they were the first to be torn to pieces, and the silence\u003cbr\u003e of the night remained almost unbroken.\u003cbr\u003e The bailiffs put a bounty of two silver twenty-crown coins\u003cbr\u003e on every wolf ’s head, a great sum at the time. But few were\u003cbr\u003e hunted, even though the proclamation was made all across the\u003cbr\u003e mountains, for the forests held another quarry that seemed more\u003cbr\u003e worth the trouble. On the heads of the rebel leaders an even\u003cbr\u003e greater price had been placed: three hundred pieces of gold for\u003cbr\u003e Hora himself and the same for Kloska. The two had been duly\u003cbr\u003e captured and taken to Gyulafehervar, and now the hunt was on\u003cbr\u003e in the mountains for Hora’s deputy, Gavrila Lung. On his head,\u003cbr\u003e dead or alive, were a hundred pieces of gold. The wolves were\u003cbr\u003e left to roam in peace.\u003cbr\u003e Late one afternoon a small, drab-looking group of men\u003cbr\u003e made its way from Toszerat in the Szamos valley up towards\u003cbr\u003e Mount Humpleu. They walked one behind the other, in silence.\u003cbr\u003e Leading the way was old Maftye, the sawmill owner, a short,\u003cbr\u003e dog-faced, grey-haired man. Behind him came a tall rifleman,\u003cbr\u003e his superior status shown by his enormous sheepskin cap and\u003cbr\u003e the blue stitching on his ragged coat. He was the real leader, it\u003cbr\u003e was plain to see. Behind him were two men from Gyurkuca, the\u003cbr\u003e skinny Pantyilimon and Simion the Israelite. Last of all came the\u003cbr\u003e younger Maftye, a shepherd’s boy from Merreggyo, nicknamed\u003cbr\u003e “Rooster”.\u003cbr\u003e They had come well prepared for the journey. Over their leather\u003cbr\u003e jackets they wore thick loden coats, all very much alike except that\u003cbr\u003e the tall rifleman’s was more ornate. Each had a wooden water flask\u003cbr\u003e and variously coloured bags and rucksacks on their backs. The tall\u003cbr\u003e one carried his forest ranger’s gun, the others long-handled axes.\u003cbr\u003e They were making good progress towards Mount Humpleu,\u003cbr\u003e following a single track across the wide expanse. Their tightly\u003cbr\u003e laced-up boots and the lower halves of their trousers were dusted\u003cbr\u003e with glittering crystals. Under old Maftye’s tread the powder\u003cbr\u003e creaked and groaned. Behind them they left white tracks as bright\u003cbr\u003e as steel in the soft clean snow.\u003cbr\u003e When they reached the meadow of Pojen the old man suddenly\u003cbr\u003e stopped and pointed with the handle of his axe towards the edge\u003cbr\u003e of the forest on the other side. Seven wolves were trotting along,\u003cbr\u003e slowly and lazily, one behind the other. They were going in the\u003cbr\u003e same direction as the men, towards Mount Humpleu.","brand":"Pushkin Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46300187427045,"sku":"NP9781782275923","price":16.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9781782275923.jpg?v=1767739171","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/es\/products\/the-enchanted-night-isbn-9781782275923","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}