Summary and Reviews of Embers by Sandor Marai

Media Reviews

Berthier Zeitung Márai is in the almost unique position of having attained posthumous best-sellerdom (in country after country) because he distills plot and description to a magic essence of atmosphere, empathy and narrative tension that no European writer has achieved since Joseph Roth.

Der Spiegel This major European novelist not only anatomizes--brilliantly--one triangular relationship from the old Austro-Hungarian Empire, he also captures the pandemonium of all human relationships the smoldering embers of our feelings, of lust, love, revenge and hate. It is wonderful, and a masterpiece.

Die Zeit With the triumph of a two hundred page novel, twentieth-century literature--which we thought was finally dead and buried--has received the posthumous gift of a new master whom in the future we will rank with Joseph Roth, Stefan Zweig, Robert Musil and even our other lost demigods, Thomas Mann and Franz Kafka. His name is Sándor Márai.

Hamburger Abendblatt A literary master lays bare the essentials---what is truth, what are the questions we ask, what is the meaning of life itself---and lets them explode into action. His philosophy is profound but hardly leaves a footprint and is virtuoso in its clear-sighted precision. This novel is a literary rediscovery of the first rank.

Stadtzeitung Wien A novel that pares all superfluous detail away from plot and character to achieve maximum tension. Hemingway goes Habsburg!

Kirkus Reviews Starred Review. The first English translation of a brooding, densely atmospheric, forgotten 1942 novel whose eminent Hungarian expatriate author (b. 1900) committed suicide, while living in the US, in his 89th year. . . . Mesmerizing. . . . A major rediscovery, arguably comparable to those of Bruno Schulz, Leo Perutz, and Joseph Roth. A small, beautifully fashioned masterpiece.

Library Journal Though the novel inevitably has an old-fashioned feel, the questions it raises are timeless. Highly recommended.

Booklist The General's performance is either the height of romantic nobility or proof positive that the aristocracy was too full of itself to survive modernity.

Publishers Weekly Embers has already been published to much acclaim in Europe 250,000 copies sold in Italy and 230,000 copies in Germany and is licensed in 18 countries around the world. Feature coverage is to be expected, and though sales may be less explosive on these shores, Knopf's plan to translate future works by Marai should encourage a reappraisal of the writer's place in literary history.