Known primarily as a novelist, the Transylvanian writer Áron Tamási was also an accomplished short-story writer, dramatist, essayist, and literary historian. Influenced by historical folk ballads, Tamási captured in his body of work the rustic tone and creative imagination of the Szekler peasantry of southwestern Transylvania.

János Áron Tamási was born on 20 September 1897 in Farkaslaka, Transylvania, which was then part of Hungary. His mother gave birth to eleven children, but six died young. Tamási attended the primary school in Farkaslaka from September 1904 until June 1910. After one of his thumbs was mutilated in an accident, his parents, assuming that he would be unable to work in the fields, enrolled him in the Catholic grammar school in Székelyudvarhely; the cost was covered in part by an uncle. Tamási entered military service in 1916, attended the...