Embers

As traditions scatter on the winds of change and nations shift beneath our feet, the quintessential crisis of modernity is one of definition. Modernity, however, is not a single moment in time so much as every moment in time. In this way, Sandor Marai's lost novels from the first part of the 20th Century are prescient today as they were then. With the glittering age of the Austro-Hungarian Empire long past, two old men meet for a single, vital, and final survey of their lives, filled with love and friendship, but also loss and betrayal. Embers is a slim novel, a single claustrophobic dialogue in an isolated forest estate, but it ranges all across the world and the human experience over the course of a single night. Marai is a master of prose on par with or exceeding his peers Kafka, Hesse, and Mann. His style is brisk, fresh, and dazzlingly vivid. His mastery of the unsaid infuses the book with a sense of mystery and dark drama. With clarity and emotional force, Embers transcends its own generation and cuts to the core of what is modern life.