Everything I have so far written, all my literary efforts both in Hungarian and English are no more than preliminary studies to this trilogy, said the author during an interview in 1990, when only the main outlines of the planned novels were fixed in his mind. Eight years later, the work is not only completed, but is also in the hands of those whom the author invites to view the Danube region and their historical identity afresh, and to think of themselves as members of a larger community, a community of the nations living along the river of many names: Donau, Dunaj, Duna, Dunav, Dunarea.