Sándor Márai:
earth, earth!
Sándor Márai experienced first hand the Nazi occupation of his country, Hungary, and then the Soviet occupation. He fled his homeland to continue writing. He went to the United States, a nation that ignored him. He had been glorified in the Hungarian writer in the thirties. His star faded when the Communists banned his work. Speak German and Hungarian, and although he could have aspired to be as well known as Thomas Mann and Stefan Zweig, chose the language of Hungary, who stood like a little treasure known only a few. In this memoir, Sándor Márai we are introduced to the Hungarian writers as a kind of shipwrecks of the culture that barely survive on an island (Hungary), surrounded by hostile Slavs. ─ Hungarian and Basque, as the Finnish ─ is a language spoken by very few people, a language most endangered and uncertain roots. Opting for him, Sándor Márai proclaimed himself champion of a lost cause. Therefore, these memories have the tone of defeat that comes from knowing you've chosen the wrong side. Sad destiny of Sandor Marai, which took the life of old age, just months before the Berlin Wall fell. Moreover, despite the difficulties of translation from Hungarian into English, this is a very high-flying book, a work vividly portrays a world that was abolished by the tides of war and European policies: the world of Hungarian bourgeoisie never again raise its head after nearly fifty years of communist repression. There is no sense of humor, something without which a work of this tone would be unbearable emotional burden of nostalgia that draws the reader into the deepest caves of the defeat of a nation, a conception of the world was behind long ago. A high-caliber work, recommended for anyone who aspires to know the recent history of Europe seen by a remarkable man who saw literature in the only way you can do: as if his life depended on it.
