​Countess Katalin Bánffy-Jelen, who has died in Tangier aged 101, came to prominence at the age of 78 when she brought a forgotten masterpiece of European literature to international attention.
The Transylvanian Trilogy, written by her father Count Miklós Bánffy, is a warts-and-all portrait of the decline of the Hungarian nobility in the period preceding the Great War. The three novels, They Were Counted (1934), They Were Found Wanting (1937) and They Were Divided (1940), had been bestsellers in Hungary but were later banned by the communist regime.
When they were reissued in Hungary in the 1980s, they became bestsellers again, and Katalin Bánffy-Jelen took steps to confirm her ownership of the copyright, and began the first translation into English.