Word: rak
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...RAKóSSY, by Cecelia Holland. A wild fictional ride through 16th century Hungary in which Magyar does in Magyar until the Turkish invaders put a temporary end to it all at the battle of Mohacs...
Although Hungarian history is studded with Rakóssys (the most celebrated led a revolt against Austria in the 18th century), this particular baron is fictional. Still, the character and the story have the ring of authenticity. Author Holland got her expertise at the Connecticut College for Women, where she specialized in the Hungarian Renaissance, but there is more in her book than research. As in her fine first novel, Firedrake (TIME, Feb. 18), Cecelia Holland writes a spare, masculine prose and applies the technique of the good U.S. western to her feudal lords. She avoids the stage-prop flummery...
...RAKÓSSY by Cecelia Holland. 243 pages. Atheneum...
...adage, "He who has a Hungarian for a friend does not need an enemy," may well be a national slander, but it proves true enough in the case of János Rakóssy, the tough, devious hero of this historical novel. The Hungarians were latecomers to Western Europe, drifting in from southern Russia in the 9th century, and they were so often friendless that it is a wonder they lasted at all. Rakóssy is set in one of the worst times of trouble for the Magyars-when Suleyman the Magnificent and his Turkish Janissaries swept...
Novelist Holland's hero helps explain the Magyar weakness. The great Baron Rakóssy and the other lords have just crushed a peasant rebellion and are now squabbling with each other. Rakóssy has his eye on Catharine de Buñez, who is related to the Habsburg emperor, and he gets her; for good measure, he seduces her sister and slays her brother-in-law. He also has his eye on the neighboring castle of Vrath and gets it as well, by trickery rather than force of arms. By this time, not only the peasants...