Ferenc Molnár, an outstanding representative of Hungarian literature before the turn of the century, became a journalist a year after the millennial anniversary of the foundation of the Hungarian nation, and his meteoric rise to fame seemed to justify the miraculous expectations about the millennium. He realized one of the most daring Hungarian dreams by creating the Hungarian version of the modern bourgeois comedy and put Hungarian playwrights on the map of the world. His body of works is considered almost the sole representative of Hungarian literature for Western public opinion.

Ferenc Molnár was born Ferenc Neumann on 12 January 1878 in Budapest, and his career was closely connected to the evolution of his birthplace (which he liked to call, with loving irony, his "native village") into a metropolis. As Budapest, in the matter of a few decades, grew into a large city of European significance...