The first English translation of a novel by Sándor Márai, Embers, came out in 2001. It had been published in Hungary in 1942, but next to nothing was known in the West about its author: the publisher's blurb said that he had been born in Kassa in the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1900 and was one of the leading 'literary' novelists of the 1930s in Hungary; and that, 'profoundly anti-Fascist, he survived the Second World War, but persecution by the Communists drove him from the country in 1948.' He went first to Italy and then the United States, committing suicide in San Diego in 1989. The book itself was described as a masterpiece by several reviewers.

LRB 21 October 2004 | PDF Download