Hungarians: A Thousand Years of Victory in Defeat - Hardcover

Lendvai, Paul

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1850656738 ISBN 13: 9781850656739

Publisher: C Hurst & Co Publishers Ltd, 2003

Synopsis

This is a comprehensive history of a legendarily proud and passionate but lonely people. Much of Europe once knew them as "child-devouring cannibals" and "bloodthirsty Huns" but it was not long before the Hungarians became steadfast defenders of Christendom and fought heroic freedom struggles against the Tartars, the Turks and, among others, the Russians. Paul Lendvai tells how, despite a string of catastrophes and their linguistic and cultural isolation, the Hungarians have survived as a nation-state for more than 1000 years. He traces Hungarian politics, culture, economics and emotions from the Magyars' dramatic entry into the Carpathian Basin in 896 to the brink of the post-cold War era. Lendvai brings to life the short-lived revolutionary triumphs of 1848-9 and 1918-19; the traumatic Treaty of Trianon (1920) which deprived Hungary of Transylvania and other historic Magyar lands; and the successive Nazi and Communist tyrannies. These are among the episodes that have formed the consciousness of the Hungarian people. Through anecdotes of heroes and traitors, victors and victims, geniuses and impostors, Lendvai conveys the multifaceted interplay, on the grand stage of Hungarian history, of progressivism and economic modernisation versus intolerance and narrow-minded nationalism. This work is a blend of narrative, irony and humour, occasional anger without taboos or prejudices. It also offers an authoritative key to understanding how and why this corner of Europe produced such a galaxy of great scientists, artists and entrepreneurs.

About this title

Review:

'This narrative of Hungarian history, elegantly translated into English, is written with verve, profound insights and just the right degree of cynicism.' -Istvan Deak, Columbia University

From the Back Cover:

"This brief narrative of Hungarian history, elegantly translated into English, is written with verve, humor, profound insights, and just the right degree of cynicism. It well explains the dilemma of a respectable old state squeezed between more powerful neighbors, the contradictions between individual genius and repeated national failure, and the recurring tragic conflicts between the defense of nationhood and messianic nationalism. It is supplemented with fascinating essays on, for instance, the complexities of Jewish and German assimilation into the Hungarian nation."--István Deák, Columbia University

"When Paul Lendvai, the indefatigable observer of Eastern Europe, writes a book, he has in general something exciting to relate. . . . Lendvai's book is a well-constructed mixture of historical facts, political judgments, and cultural anecdotes."--Der Spiegel

"Lendvai has written a standard-setting work, always at the highest level of historical research yet so eminently readable, so entertaining--only a journalist out of passion with profound knowledge of history is able to write in this way. . . . Lendvai's presentation of the thousand years of Hungarian history in Europe is not only comprehensive, it is also just."--Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung

About this edition

• Publisher: C Hurst & Co Publishers Ltd
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 1850656738
• ISBN 13: 9781850656739
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 572