text: Description Graustark is described as a mountainous country with an area of approximately  - for reference, the unclaimed territory of Bir Tawil has an area of 795 square miles. There is at least one reference in the books that fixes its location as somewhere in the Carpathian Mountains near Romania. On the other hand, in Graustark it is said to be threatened with reduction to being only 25 miles wide by 150 miles long (3750 square miles) - for reference, the land area of Lebanon is equivalent to 3,950 square miles - and in Truxton King is said to provide a shorter rail route to Russian territories in or near Afghanistan. Graustark's capital city, Edelweiss, is accessible by train from Vienna. The mountain town of Ganlook is near the border with Axphain, Graustark's traditional enemy.
  Graustark is ruled as a principality and its unit of currency is called the gavvo, worth $1.40 at the time of the novel Truxton King. Graustarkian is the native language of the people, although American English is universally spoken among the educated classes and is the everyday language of the royal family and court.
  Novels
  The Graustark novels are stories of court intrigue, royal disguise, and romance similar to Anthony Hope's 1894 novel, The Prisoner of Zenda, and its sequels. They were popular best-sellers at the time they were published and the original editions are still readily available in used book shops. The two authors' novels gave their name to a fictional genre called either Ruritanian romance based on The Prisoner of Zenda, or "Graustarkian," from McCutcheon's novels. This genre contains tales of romance and intrigue usually featuring titled characters in small, fictional, Central European or East European countries.
  The novels in McCutcheon's series are:
  Graustark: The Story of a Love Behind a Throne (1901)  Gutenberg text