Hidden among the Huns (1901)

Hidden among the Huns is a new translation of Géza Gárdonyi's historical novel, Láthatatlan ember (“Invisible Person” or "Invisible Man"), originally published in 1901. Gárdonyi considered it to be his best work, better than his much more widely read Egri csillagok.

It is the story of a fictional Greek boy nicknamed Zeta who accompanies the Byzantine delegation of 449 sent by Emperor Theodosius II to the court of Attila, king of the Hun empire. The description of the delegation is based upon an account of the eyewitness Byzantine rhetorician Priscus who is also a character in the novel.

Zeta becomes infatuated with a Hun girl, becomes a slave of the Huns, and joins the army of King Attila that invades Gaul in 451 and fights in the Battle of Catalunian Fields against the last great Roman general, Aëtius, and his Visigoth allies.

Over the centuries, Western historians assumed the truth of contemporary and near-contemporary views of the Romans and Byzantine Greeks: that the Huns were an ignorant, violent and savage people. Hungarians view Attila and the Huns as kindred folk to their own Magyar ancestors, and Gárdonyi offers a much more balanced and fascinating description of life among the Huns — even though he mistakenly gives them saddles, stirrups and spurs.

An earlier English translation of Láthatatlan ember was was titled Slave of the Huns. The novel was translated in German as Ich war den Hunnen untertan (“I Was a Slave of the Huns”), in Turkish as Anlaşılmayan İnsan (“The Incomprehensible Man”) and in Spanish as Atila, el azote de Dios (“Attila, the Scourge of God”) and El esclavo de Atila (“The Slave of Attila”).

Hidden among the Huns (translation 2022) is available at Amazon (Hidden among the Huns) in paperback ($16) and ebook ($8) formats.