Lily's Blog

This was a very enjoyable and interesting read. Kati, a Hungarian friend gave me this book when I was in Budapest. It’s an English translation of the Hungarian novel, A gyertyak conkig egnek, originally published in 1942.

Márai was born in Hungary in 1900 and by the age of thirty was one of Hungary’s leading novelists. He was driven into exile in 1948 when the Communists came to power and banned his books. He lived first in Italy and then in America. Sadly he committed suicide at the age of eighty-nine.

In the novel, two old men, once the best of friends, meet for the first time in forty-one years. They dine together, sitting in the exact same places as at their last meeting, all those years ago. Later they sit in front of a dying fire, one of them nearly silent, the other, the host, slowly speaking. At their last meeting, in the company of a beautiful woman, an unspoken act of betrayal left all three lives shattered – and each of them alone. Tonight they talk of old passions and that last, fateful meeting.

I felt this book was beautifully written and found it difficult to put down. It gives a great glimpse of life in the days of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

The book was described by the Times as ‘Magnificent. A spellbinding story driven by intense passion.’ and the Observer, ‘Extraordinary. Elegaic, sombre, musical and gripping. An immensely wise book.’

There is a Sándor Márai blog, written by Erik Ketzan, a first-generation Hungarian-American. There I read that Jeremy Irons had starred in a stage adaptation of the book in 2005 and that a Hungarian film adaptation premiered in Hungary in 2006 at the 37th Hungarian Film Festival.

Márai wrote forty-six books in all. To date, five have been translated into English. They include: Memoir of Hungary, Casanova in Bolzano, The Rebels and Esther’s Inheritance. I am interested in all of them particularly Memoir of Hungary as it apparently provides an interesting glimpse of post World War Two Hungary under Soviet occupation. It was first published in the West, because it could not be published in the Hungary of the post-1956 era. One gets a sense of this period of Hungarian history when talking with Hungarian people.

A point of interest is that the Hungarian form of the author’s name is Márai (surname) Sándor (first name). The Hungarian style is always to write the surname first. I have got used to this with our Hungarian friends. I notice that the English translation of this book uses our convention however.