Background
Lajos Zilahy was born on March 27, 1891, in Nagyszalonta, Austria-Hungary (now Salonta, Bihor, Romania). He was the son of a notary public.
1955
Geneva, Switzerland
Lajos Zilahy with Ilya Ehrenburg in Geneva.
Budapest, Egyetem tér 1-3, 1053, Hungary
Lajos Zilahy attended the University of Budapest, Hungary (now Eötvös Loránd University), where he studied law.
(Miette lives with her retired father and meets the handso...)
Miette lives with her retired father and meets the handsome but wilful Peter who falls passionately in love with her. Tormented by jealousy he pursues her and they marry. Their idyll is destroyed by the onset of war when Peter joins the army and ends up a prisoner of war of the Russians.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1853753181/?tag=2022091-20
1931
(The Dukays are the oldest aristocratic family in Hungary,...)
The Dukays are the oldest aristocratic family in Hungary, and this is the tale of their inexorable decline after the First World War. It is the story of Zia Dukay, youngest of Count Dupi's daughters, a modern girl born into feudal splendor in the immense family castle of Ararat, and married with medieval pomp. Not since Scarlett O'Hara has there been so courageous a heroine, so determined to survive the wreck of family fortunes with the man she loves. It is also the story of Zia's sister Christina, romantically involved with the deposed Hapsburg king; of her brother Georgy, who leaves for America; and of Janos, who becomes a Nazi. Told in the great richness of detail, The Dukays is a tumultuous and sweeping saga.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01A68RGYS/?tag=2022091-20
1949
(Set in the revolutionary Europe of 1848, this is the stor...)
Set in the revolutionary Europe of 1848, this is the story of two Hungarian brothers who occupy opposing political and ideological camps: Dali, a fiery, freedom-loving romantic, and Antal, a conservative bureaucrat. Throughout the tale, vivid portraits of historical figures appear - Prince Metternich, the Austro-Hungarian chancellor; Tsar Nicholas I; and Lajos Kossuth, the hero of the fight for Hungarian independence.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1853753874/?tag=2022091-20
1965
Lajos Zilahy was born on March 27, 1891, in Nagyszalonta, Austria-Hungary (now Salonta, Bihor, Romania). He was the son of a notary public.
Lajos Zilahy attended the University of Budapest, Hungary (now Eötvös Loránd University), where he studied law.
Lajos Zilahy began his writing career in his mid-teens. His literary career was interrupted by the outbreak of World War I, in which Zilahy fought and received a battle wound. Upon recovering from his injuries, Zilahy protested that Hungarian interests were being subordinated to those of the Germans, and he chose to risk execution rather than return to combat. After the war, he concentrated on writing. During the 1920s, Zilahy divided his time between writing fiction and plays (Süt a nap, 1924, A tábornok, 1928) and working as a journalist. He filed reports from Paris and London in the 1920s and worked for the periodicals Budapesti Hírlap and Magyarország.
By the early 30s, Zilahy's work was reaching a global audience. His epic love story, Two Prisoners (Két fogoly), about newlyweds torn apart by World War I, made its American debut in 1931. The following year, Zilahy enjoyed a banner year in the United States with the publication of the novel The Deserter (A szoekeveny), his Broadway debut as a playwright with Firebird, and the release of the Paramount film The Virtuous Sin, adapted from his play The General.
After World War II erupted in Europe, Zilahy founded the Zilahy Institute, a foundation designed to promote humanitarianism and pacifism. But when Hungary became occupied by the Germans, Zilahy found himself targeted for arrest. He avoided the Germans by circulating under an assumed name and, ultimately, living in hiding. Following the end of the war, Zilahy was branded as a traitor by Hungary's new Communist regime.
Although he served as the first president of the Hungarian-Soviet Cultural Society, Zilahy remained an opponent of communism and immigrated to the United States in 1947, where he continued to write. Two years later, he produced the centerpiece of his historical epic, The Dukays (Aradt), which focused on the four children in an aristocratic Hungarian family as they struggle with social and political change. The book spawned a sequel.
Having settled in Rhode Island with his wife, Zilahy continued to write in his native tongue and two of his most popular novels in Hungary were Valamit visz a víz and A lelek kialszik, both of which dealt with a Hungarian immigrant's Americanization. Among Zilahy's most prominent publications from this period are The Dukays, an imposing, multi-generation account of a prominent Hungarian family, and The Angry Angel, a sequel chronicling the Dukays during World War II and its aftermath. The first part of the trilogy, the posthumously published Century in Scarlet concerns the Dukay family during the years after Napoleon's defeat.
(Set in the revolutionary Europe of 1848, this is the stor...)
1965(The Dukays are the oldest aristocratic family in Hungary,...)
1949(Miette lives with her retired father and meets the handso...)
1931Lajos Zilahy was an opponent of fascism and communism.
Physical Characteristics: The cause of Zilahy's death was heart failure.
Lajos Zilahy married Piroska Barczy in 1930. The marriage produced one child, Mihaly.