Embers by Sandor Marai

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Sandor Marai is a Hungarian writer whose works have only recently been discovered by the West and translated into English in the past decade. As of this post, I counted only six books that are available in English. I've owned a copy of Embers by Sandor Marai for several years now but only recently did I finally open it - a few pages in I asked myself why in the world it took me that long to do so. I read it at one sitting, simply entranced by the writing. I'm sure this is in no small measure due to the translator, Carol Brown Janeway.

Embers is not large on plot; not much action happens. Most of the book centers around one extraordinary night which the 75-year-old General, an aristocrat born and reared in the waning days of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, has been planning for 41 years. His castle in the Hungarian countryside is stirring in preparation for an unexpected, but long-awaited, visit from his once closest friend, Konrad. It has been 41 years since the two have spoken. For this visit, the General will recreate the setting just as it was 41 years ago, down to the decorations, the meal, and the arrangement of furniture. It will be exactly the same except for the absence of his dead wife, Krisztina. For this is no ordinary meeting; on this night, the General and Konrad will confront each other about the events of so many years ago involving a hunt and Krisztina's death which have shadowed both men's lives.

The writing and the execution is what makes Embers transcendant - I was riveted from the first page. The details could be banal - two men, a beautiful, dead woman, a broken friendship, and betrayal. In Marai's skillful hands, the connection between these elements is provocative and mysterious; the reader is on tenterhooks waiting for the truth to explode.

"'We don't have long to live,' the General says abruptly, as if he were pronouncing the clinching statement in an unvoiced argument. 'Another year, maybe two, perhaps not even that much. We don't have long to live because you came back. As you are well aware. You had plenty of time to think in the tropics and then in your house near London. Forty-one years is a long time. You thought it all over, didn't you?...But then you came back, because you couldn't do anything else. And I've been waiting for you, because I couldn't do anything else. And we've both known that we would meet again, and then it would be all over with life and everything that gave our existence meaning and tension. A secret that lurks between the two of us has extraordinary power. It burns through the fabric of life like a scorching beam.'"

The contrasting settings of fin de siecle Vienna and the remote castle in Hungary depict in sumptuous detail the romantic idealism of the young versus the bitter loneliness of old age. Bright and talented in their youth, what derailed the promising futures of the General, Konrad, and Krisztina?

The reader doesn't find out the full truth - let me get that out of the way - but enough is revealed to make the conclusion to Embers a deeply satisfying one.