This great collection of three novels gives a fine picture of the life of the old Transylvania in the last days of the Habsburg Empire of Austria-Hungary before the disaster of 1914, when European civilization committed suicide. It was written after terrible events had darkened the life of postwar Hungary and Romania, but they would become darker. Had Bánffy written after the catastrophes of the 1940s, the tone of the book would surely have been even more sad.