In a Hungarian county haunted by a bird of ill omen, the family of the headsman and the unloved son of a proud house are swept into catastrophe when cholera arrives and terrified peasants, believing they are being poisoned, rise against their lords. Jókai wrote it in the bleak years after the defeat of the 1848–49 revolution, and its darkness shows it.
A sombre historical novel by Hungary’s great romancer, in the English translation of R. Nisbet Bain. Download the free EPUB.