Embers – Sandor Marai

Originally published in 1942 (in Hungarian) and now rediscovered to international acclaim, this taut and exquisitely structured novel by the Hungarian master Sandor Marai conjures the melancholy glamour of a decaying empire and the disillusioned wisdom of its last heirs.

Author

Sándor Márai was a Hungarian writer and journalist. He was born in the city of Kassa in Austria-Hungary (now Košice in Slovakia) to an old family of Saxon origin. In his early years, Márai travelled to and lived in Frankfurt, Berlin, and Paris and briefly considered writing in German, but eventually chose his mother language, Hungarian, for his writings. He settled in Budapest, in 1928. In the 1930s, he gained prominence with a precise and clear realist style. He was the first person to write reviews of the work of Kafka.