Gyurkovicsin pojat

About this book

"Gyurkovicsin pojat" by Ferenc Herczeg is a novel written in the late 19th century. It is a witty, satirical family chronicle set in the Austro‑Hungarian world, following the exuberant Gyurkovics clan—especially the hot‑blooded twin Géza and his gentler brother András—through scrapes with schoolmasters, the army, society, and first love.

The opening of the novel frames a narrator who finds a stranger asleep in his bed after a masked ball; the intruder turns out to be a Gyurkovics son, which leads into a brisk, comic overview of the large family and its forceful matriarch. The focus shifts to the twins: childhood brawls and bedlam, school gambling and expulsions, and a farcical, near‑forcible graduation. Géza then joins the cavalry as a one‑year volunteer, bungles uniform rules, causes a café incident, melodramatically shoots himself with a toyish revolver, and receives a slap‑on‑the‑wrist punishment. He cheekily draws a pipe on a double‑headed imperial eagle, flees the furious colonel, hides in daughter Jutka’s room, and—after she helps him—scrapes the prank away, while her split Vienna–provincial upbringing is sketched. The Baja ball caps this start: Géza monopolizes Jutka on the dance floor and even defies a lieutenant’s demand to yield her, signaling both his audacity and a budding romance.