Sándor Márai was born in Kassa (then Hungary, later Slovakia) on April 1, 1900 (the precise date will become relevant), and died by suicide in San Diego in 1989, 3 years after the death of his wife of 63 years and 2 years after the death of their only child, an adopted son.

Márai was the eldest of four children; his father was a lawyer, and his mother was from a family of military officers. He began to publish in his teens, was the first to translate Kafka into Hungarian, and wrote more than 50 novels. After toying with Communism, he spent a decade in Germany and France, where he married, and then returned to Budapest in 1929 for a decade of writing. A son was born in 1939 but died a few weeks later. Shortly after that Márai wrote Candles Burn to the End, published in Budapest in 1942 and now in an English translation by Carol Janeway (from the German translation of the Hungarian original), retitled Embers.

Márai opposed Hitler and the Nazis (his wife was Jewish) as well as Stalin and the Communists and defended liberal bourgeois values. After the Communists suppressed his work, he left Hungary in 1948, never to return, and was "rediscovered" only after his death. Embers was a bestseller in Italy and Germany before the English translation.

The title refers to the remnants of the fire into which General Henrik, the hero of the novel, threw the unread diary of Krisztina, his long-deceased wife. Her lover, Konrad, who had been Henrik’s best friend since they were both 10 years old, had just declined Henrik’s offer that they read it together. Konrad also declined to answer the first of Henrik’s two questions, "Did Krisztina know that you wanted to kill me that day in the forest?" (p. 205). He did answer the second question, "Has the true meaning of our lives not been the agony of longing for a woman who is dead?" with, "You know that the answer is yes" (pp. 210–211).

Henrik already knew the facts; what he wanted now was the "truth." However, by the time of their meeting on August 14, 1940, even the truth seemed almost irrelevant. The questions go back to July 2, 1899 (approximately the day that Márai himself was conceived!). Henrik and Konrad, 34-year-old army officers, joined for a hunt at Henrik’s ancestral estate. Henrik recalled, "I felt you raise your gun…take aim…you could not be taking aim at the deer…I couldn’t move because my fate was no longer mine to control…then, very slowly, you let the gun sink" (pp. 144–145). The next day, Konrad fled, Henrik discovered Konrad’s involvement with Krisztina, who was only 21 years old, and time was suspended for all three. Krisztina and Henrik withdrew from each other, never to see each other or to speak again, Krisztina became ill and died, Konrad roamed the earth, and Henrik isolated himself in his private suite. Forty-one years later Konrad returned, and the two friends, now 75, who had shared everything (including Krisztina) in their youth, met for the last time.

What makes the book of interest? It is a psychological novel about a man’s relationship with parents who were somewhat distant but who shaped his values. It also deals with his relationship with a beloved wet nurse who saved his life when he was 8 years old and who was still caring for him when he was 75 and she 91. Finally, it deals with his relationship with his closest friend from childhood, a boy quite different from himself (resonating with the difference between Henrik’s cultured mother and his military father), a friend with whom he enacted dramas of love, loyalty, envy, jealousy, betrayal, revenge, and the transformations of these wrought by time and memory.

Embers is also a social and political novel, for although the great events of the period (World War I, the rise of Communism and Fascism) are barely mentioned, they are reflected in the lives of the characters. The cultural life of society is contrasted with the life of the military, the world of music with the world of the hunt, the world of tradition and the past with the world of change and the future. But perhaps most of all it is a philosophical novel. Márai shares his ideas through Henrik’s thoughts and words.

On friendship:

On identity:

On character:

Márai’s beloved world was falling apart when he wrote this book, although the worst was yet to come. The life he treasured was about to become the life of the past. Perhaps its most important legacies are words, ideas, and works of art such as this one.