Embers by Sandor Marai

Embers by Sandor Marai is a novel about Henrik and Konrad, two men who share a deep friendship from childhood. The novel opens with Konrad visiting Henrik for the first time in 41 years. The reasons why the pair were separated for so long are unraveled throughout the book.

Henrik comes from a privileged, wealthy background while Konrad is from poorer stock. They both attend a military training academy as youngsters, but Henrik is much more suited to the military life, while Konrad wishes to pursue the finer arts such as music. When Henrik’s father (a military man himself) meets Konrad for the first time, he states to his son that his friend will never be suited to the military because he is a ‘different sort of man.’

As they meet at Henrik’s castle for the first time in four decades, they discuss at first what they have been doing during that time, and then come to the reasons why these two friends have not seen each other for so long. The background to the story involves the first 80 or so pages, and then a dinner party discussion between the two goes on for the remaining part of the novel. Most of this discussion is a one-sided monologue by Henrik. In fact, Henrik goes on speaking about the pair’s past for almost the entire last 70 pages. While Henrik’s monologue goes on much too long, some of the passages were beautifully written:

The feeling that bound me to my mother and to you and to Krisztina was always the same, a longing, a hope in search of something, a helpless, sad yearning. For we always love the ‘other,’ we always seek it out, no matter what the circumstances and sudden changes in our lives….The greatest secret and the greatest gift any of us can be offered is the chance for two ’similar’ people to meet. It happens so rarely — it must be because nature uses all its force and cunning to prevent such harmony — perhaps it’s that creation and the renewal of life need the tension that is generated between two people of opposite temperaments who seek each other out. Like an alternating current. . . an exchange of energy between positive and negative poles, think of all the despair and the blind hope that lie behind this duality.

The book has quite a bit of suspense to it. I was definitely interested and engaged and wanted to know the pair’s secret, but at the end, it just didn’t quite satisfy. I would like to re-read this someday as a translation from the Hungarian to English. This translation was in English from the German translation of the original Hungarian, which doesn’t seem like it would quite work. In fact, I noticed in a few spots that the same words or phrases were repeated too close together. In one instance, ‘prettified’ was a word used twice in close proximity, and it just didn’t fit. I would read more by this author, though, if there were direct translations available.

1942, 213 pp.
Rating: 3.5

Also reviewed by:

• Caribousmom
• A Striped Armchair