Embers

Profound. Wise. Immensely beautiful. Embers by Sandor Marai, originally written in Hungarian, and translated by Carol Brown Janeway, is literature that curls its words around your heart, winds its way through your soul, and leaves a breathtaking imprint in your mind - a memory that gasps at the sheer weight of its carry - at the sheer beauty of the thoughts, the words, the lines that frame this impossibly brilliant novel.

Am I exaggerating? Nay, am not. Embers is a privilege to read. Even if I don't read another book this year, I can still be happy knowing I have read this. Tracing the life of two friends, Henrik and Konrad, who meet after 41 years - the book mixes a surreal setting with profound wisdom. It is not a story as much as it is a gripping revelation. Poetic and haunting, it is a tale of suspense - revealed through long monologues by General Henrik. What was it that drove these two friends apart? We know that through the course of the novel, and the end perhaps, doesn't answer all the questions, but we do know by then that life lies not in the answers. Relationships are not easy, and we humans are never simple. As Henrik says: "Every human relationship has a tangible core, and we can think about it, analyze it all we want, it is unchangeable.” This book is like that - its tangible core is beauty, the soul of passion - I can analyze it as much as I want, but then I would lose the truth of its meaning - and that, to Henrik, would be unforgivable. Truth, for him, was the essence of life.

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The feeling that bound me to my mother and to you and to Krisztina was always the same, a longing, a hope in search of something, a helpless, sad yearning. For we always love the ‘other,’ we always seek it out, no matter what the circumstances and sudden changes in our lives….The greatest secret and the greatest gift any of us can be offered is the chance for two ’similar’ people to meet. It happens so rarely — it must be because nature uses all its force and cunning to prevent such harmony — perhaps it’s that creation and the renewal of life need the tension that is generated between two people of opposite temperaments who seek each other out. Like an alternating current. . . an exchange of energy between positive and negative poles, think of all the despair and the blind hope that lie behind this duality.

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Verdict: Beautiful.

Rating: 5/5