Lily’s Blog

This is the second book I have read by Hungarian author, Sándor Márai. This book, written in 1939 was first published in English in November 2008. It was translated by English/Hungarian poet George Szirtes, who writes an interesting blog. Esther’s Inheritance is really a long short story, only 148 pages in all. It’s such an engaging read that I actually started and finished it in a night. Frances O’Rourke reviewed this book very recently in the Irish Times. Eileen Battersby in an article in the same paper, listed Esther’s Inheritance as one of her top 25 (actually 26!) reads of 2009.

Esther, an unmarried woman in her forties has been living a quiet life when one day, she receives a telegram from Lajos, the great love of her life. Lajos abandoned Esther twenty years previously, and married her sister, Vilma, now deceased. The telegram tells that he is coming to visit the next day. Esther tells Nunu, with whom she lives. Nunu’s amusing reply was “Good … I will lock away the silver”. Esther has not forgotten that Lajos is a fantasist and a liar, nor has she forgotten that he caused her a lot of hurt, yet he still has a strange hold over her. The book tells of family secrets, love and betrayal.

Esther’s Inheritance is now also a film.

I was interested to read the Guardians review of this book which concluded with a broader interpretation of the story. Throughout the war, Márai opposed the Nazis and their fascist allies in Hungary’s authoritarian regime (his wife was Jewish). In his heroine’s trance-like capitulation, it is tempting to see a larger drama of mesmerised masses, swindled of their inheritance by charismatic fraudsters with false promises, sleepwalking into disaster. “Wake up, Esther!” Nunu scolds her for refusing to accept that Lajos swapped her mother’s jewelled heirloom for a fake ring. At the close, a dozing Esther, who has neglected to install electric lighting, finds an “end-of-September wind” tearing open the window and snuffing out the candle. The world is engulfed by darkness. But Esther sleeps on.

Márai committed suicide in 1989, so he never witnessed the collapse of communism. He also died before his large collections of books started to be translated and available to a much wider audience. I previously reviewed his book Embers here.