Now, this book Embers,was translated from German by Carol Brown Janeway. That last bit matters, all the purists throw up their hands in horror, because the original is in Hungarian, what you read is two moves away from it.

The book is very very good. I read it in one day and then went over it again, the same day. Two hundred pages, give or take, in a pleasing format, nice Garamond font, space between the lines, and a different, quite wonderful font for the title and the first letter of each chapter, that font is not identified, a pity. It looks handwritten in the 19th century, maybe with a quill. Right for this book.
I know it is anathema to translate twice, but she has done it well. I did not feel that I was reading German or another foreign language. No sense of a strange grammar underlying the text, needing to be overcome. The thought that this is a translation did not intrude.
During the second reading, when the dreadful urgency I always experience to know what happens to the characters has died down, I thought about it a little, having read a few reviews online.
The book was written in 1942, in Hungary. It describes the life of a Hungarian General, a member of the aristocracy, and his coming to terms with death. Also the death of a way of life and a way of thinking, of reasoning. An essential attribute or value was being destroyed, and I think that is the topic of this book. ( )

At a castle in the 1930s, two men meet for the first time in 41 years. Four decades earlier a murky, traumatic event, concerning a woman, led to their sudden separation. Now, as their lives draw to a close, they are keen to draw a line under this event ...

This was quite an enjoyable book. It did jump around in time quite a lot, and the main bulk of the story covered one of the men telling his side of the story, so it was sometimes a bit difficult to follow. Given the big build-up, the ending was also somewhat of a disappointment, or maybe it was meant to be intriguing? Certainly, I would recommend this book, but don't expect any answers in a hurry... ( )

For a book that carries on a single, one-sided conversation for nearly half its length, this is surprisingly readable, and wholly intriguing. The topic is friendship, and with it, rather inevitably, betrayal. The General's youth is related to us, and his early friendship with Konrad, who comes from a very much different background to the wealthy aristocrat. As so often happens, a woman is involved... ( )

A very odd book that for all the simplicity of his style, mode and even the plot, compels you to read on. The tension within the conversation is captivating.

Translated by a brilliant translator, but from the German. It reads more abstractly and neutrally than it probably should. The interest is in the embers: the last moments of feeling after years of pondering and mulling on events that happened a half-lifetime before.

Marai has been criticized, in "Bookforum" (2008) for being more recherché than his supporters want to admit. That may be so, but here the nearly petrified, nearly mummified, dampened, nearly voiceless and actionless atmosphere, where almost nothing moves and every thought and feeling has been last felt so long ago that only its paperthin husk remains in memory, works perfectly. ( )