Set among the Transylanian and broader Hungarian nobility a decade or so before WWI, but written in the mid-thirties, this is a Tolstoyan tale of personal and political upheaval. Through the dual foci of Counts (and, like seemingly everyone in the novel, cousins) Balint Abady and Laszlo Gyeroffy, and switching between Kolozsvár (modern Cluj) and Budapest, with excursions into the mountainous, forested Translyvanian backcountry, Banffy illuminates the incestuousness and myopia of the junior Hungarian partner in the Austro-Hungarian joint venture. Hungarian parliamentarians bicker about petty symbols of national identity, oblivious to the looming geopolitical stormclouds; provincial gentry divert themselves with the traditional balls, hunts, card games, affairs, and duels while middle-class opportunists and Romanian interlopers take quiet advantage.
This is very much a late flowering of the 19th Century novel. The narrative voice is richly omniscient; elaborate set-piece social gatherings serve as high-intensity incubators of plot, character and setting; the story develops organically and at leisure. Balint tries to live in accordance with a quasi-feudal code of honour, attempting to improve the peasants who occupy his forested estates with progressive schemes a la Levin in Anna Karenina (although he's much more realistic than Tolstoy's deluded alter-ego), while struggling without much success to contain his love for his unhappily-married cousin Adrienne. Banffy's portrayal of the trauma inflicted on her by her "satanic", abusive husband has a surprisingly modern ring to it. Gyeroffy, also in love with a cousin (you'd need a PhD in genealogy to map the characters in this book), has his life torn apart by a gambling addiction whose progression is described in exquisite, inevitable detail.
As a Hungarian, I can say with some authority that this is definitely not THE GREAT Hungarian novel. Szerb Antal (Hungarians have their first names last, and it looked so bad when I tried to write it in translation) is much more enjoyable, especially for foreigners or people not too knowledgable about our history, Molnár Ferenc's adolescence books had far bigger reach (my brother if you mention the Grund to any hungarian guy you'll see the child come back in their eyes) and Gárdonyi Géza is by far the most celebrated author with his book Eclipse of the Crescent Moon. Though none of these figures were that huge as Hungary was big on poetry. Our poets were on fire, quite literally sometimes, and have been the centre of cultural and political revolutions. The big figures in Hungarian literature are nearly all poets. Those poems just don't have the same effects translated, so good luck learning one of the hardest languages in the world if you really want to get into Hun lit. So if there was one GREAT Hungarian book, it would be Eclipse of the Crescent Moon or Sons of the Stone-Hearted Man (which every person who has read it has hated with a passion).
It was just a silly play on the well-worn phrase “great American novel”. I’ll take your word for the greatness of that book that everyone hates with a passion!