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Zusatztext “As masterly and lovely a novel as one could ask for. . . . Embers is perfect.” --The Washington Post Book World “A lustrous novel. . . . [with] its powerful undercurrent of suspense and its elegantly wrought armature of moral and metaphysical argument. . . . Triumphant.” --The New York Times Book Review “The reader will . . . be . . . very quietly nailed to the spot . . . mesmerizing. . . . In every way . . . satisfying.” --Los Angeles Times “Tantalizing. . . .Brilliant. . . . [Marai’s] words resonate.” —The Wall Street Journal Informationen zum Autor Sándor Márai was born in Kassa, in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, in 1900, and died in San Diego in 1989. He rose to fame as one of the leading literary novelists in Hungary in the 1930s. Profoundly antifascist, he survived World War II, but persecution by the Communists drove him from the country in 1948, first to Italy, then to the United States. He is the author of a body of work now being rediscovered and which Knopf is translating into English. A NOTE ABOUT THE TRANSLATOR Carol Brown Janeway's translations include Binjamin Wilkomirski's Fragments , Marie de Hennezel's Intimate Death , Bernhard Schlink's The Reader , Jan Philipp Reemtsma's In the Cellar , Hans-Ulrich Treichel's Lost , Zvi Kolitz's Yosl Rakover Talks to God , and Benjamin Lebert's Crazy . Klappentext Originally published in 1942 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. In a secluded woodland castle an old General prepares to receive a rare visitor, a man who was once his closest friend but who he has not seen in forty-one years. Over the ensuing hours host and guest will fight a duel of words and silences, accusations and evasions. They will exhume the memory of their friendship and that of the General's beautiful, long-dead wife. And they will return to the time the three of them last sat together following a hunt in the nearby forest--a hunt in which no game was taken but during which something was lost forever. Embers is a classic of modern European literature, a work whose poignant evocation of the past also seems like a prophetic glimpse into the moral abyss of the present Leseprobe Chapter 1 In the morning, the old general spent a considerable time in the wine cellars with his winegrower inspecting two casks of wine that had begun to ferment. He had gone there at first light, and it was past eleven o'clock before he had finished drawing off the wine and returned home. Between the columns of the veranda, which exuded a musty smell from its damp flagstones, his gamekeeper was standing waiting for him, holding a letter. "What do you want?"the General demanded brusquely, pushing back his broad-brimmed straw hat to reveal a flushed face. For years now, he had neither opened nor read a single letter. The mail went to the estate manager's office, to be sorted and dealt with by one of the stewards. "It was brought by a messenger,"said the gamekeeper, standing stiffly at attention. The General recognized the handwriting. Taking the letter and putting it in his pocket, he stepped into the cool of the entrance hall and, without uttering a word, handed the gamekeeper both his stick and his hat. He removed a pair of spectacles from his cigar case, went over to the window where light insinuated itself through the slats of the blinds, and began to read. "Wait,"he said over his shoulder to the gamekeeper, who was about to leave the room to dispose of cane and hat. He crumpled the letter into his pocket. "Tell Kalman to harness up at six o'clock. The Landau, because there's rain in the air. And he is to wear full-d...
