The Poor Plutocrats by Maurus Jokai, Fiction, Political, Action & Adventure, Fantasy

The tale includes mysterious bandits, counterfeiters, poisoners and murderers, plus portraits of Hungarian and Romanian peasant life in the later 1800s. Jókai rises to the sort of breathless excitement produced by Dumas. Mór Jókai -- also known as Maurus Jókai -- was a Hungarian dramatist and novelist. He originally studied law and became an advocate in what is now Budapest. Encouraged by the reception of his first play, The Jewish Boy, he turned to writing, producing Working Days, and becoming editor of Életképek, the leading Hungarian literary journal. Following a revolution and the deposition of the Hapsburg dynasty, he became a political suspect. He spent the next fourteen years reviving the Magyar language, producing thirty romances and numerous other works. After the re-establishment of the Hungarian Constitution, he sat in parliament for twenty years, founded and edited the government organ Hon, and was later elevated to the upper house by the king.

About the Author :
Moric Jokay de Asva (1825 - 1904), outside Hungary also known as Maurus Jokai, was a Hungarian dramatist and novelist. Jokai was extremely prolific. It was to literature that he continued to devote most of his time and his productiveness after 1870 was stupendous, amounting to some hundreds of volumes. Stranger still, none of this work is slipshod and the best of it deserves to endure. Amongst the finest of his later works may be mentioned the unique and incomparable Az arany ember (A Man of Gold, translated into English, among others, under the title The Man with the Golden Touch), the most popular A koszivu ember fiai (The Heartless Man's Sons), the heroic chronicle of the Hungarian Revolution of 1848 and A tengerszemu holgy (Eyes like the Sea), the latter of which won the Academy's prize in 1890. He was also an amateur chess player. His jovo szazad regenye (The novel of the next century - 1872) is accounted an important early work of Science Fiction though the term did not yet exist at the time. In spite of its romantic trappings, this monumental two-volume novel includes some acute observations and almost prophetic visions, such as the prediction of a revolution in Russia and the establishment of a totalitarian state there, or the arrival of aviation. Because it could be read as a satirical allegory on Leninism and Stalinism in the Soviet Union, the book was banned in Hungary in the decades of the Communist regime. (Its "Critical Edition" was delayed until 1981.)