# What is the best 19th-century Hungarian novel?

> Romantic epics of the reform era sit next to sly village satire and brooding confessional prose, from the century when Hungarian fiction found its voice.

*By YPB Team · Published October 30, 2026 · https://youpick.best/ranking/what-is-the-best-19th-century-hungarian-novel*

---

## Current results (no votes yet)

1. **The Man with the Golden Touch** — score 1000/1000
   Mór Jókai's 1872 novel Az arany ember, about a Danube shipmaster torn between wealth and a hidden island idyll.
2. **A Strange Marriage** — score 733/1000
   Mikszáth's Különös házasság, published in 1900, a bitter satire of a nobleman forced into a sham marriage.
3. **The Village Notary** — score 732/1000
   József Eötvös's 1845 A falu jegyzője, a reformist satire of corrupt county government seen through a village clerk.
4. **Eclipse of the Crescent Moon** — score 599/1000
   Géza Gárdonyi's 1899 Egri csillagok, the beloved epic of the 1552 defence of Eger against the Ottomans.
5. **A Hungarian Nabob** — score 599/1000
   Jókai's 1853 Egy magyar nábob, a sweeping portrait of a reckless gentry magnate in the Reform Era.
6. **The Siege of Beszterce** — score 599/1000
   Mikszáth's 1895 Beszterce ostroma, about an eccentric count who wages a private medieval war in modern Hungary.
7. **The Baron's Sons** — score 0/1000
   Jókai's 1869 A kőszívű ember fiai, following three brothers who defy their iron-willed father during the 1848 revolution.
8. **Black Diamonds** — score 0/1000
   Jókai's 1870 Fekete gyémántok, a coal-mining industrialist's romance and struggle against financial speculators.
9. **Zoltán Kárpáthy** — score 0/1000
   Jókai's 1854 sequel to A Hungarian Nabob, tracing the nabob's son through the politics of the 1840s.
10. **St. Peter's Umbrella** — score 0/1000
   Kálmán Mikszáth's 1895 Szent Péter esernyője, a warm, ironic village tale about a priest and a mysterious umbrella.
11. **The Carthusian** — score 0/1000
   Eötvös's 1839-41 A karthauzi, a melancholy confessional novel of a French aristocrat who retreats into a monastery.

Tags: books, classics, fiction, 19th century, hungary