Sándor Márai
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Sándor Márai (originally Sándor Károly Henrik Grosschmied de Mára) (April 11, 1900 – February 22, 1989) was a Hungarian writer and journalist.
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[edit] Biography
He was born in the city of Košice in Slovakia (Then Kassa in Austria-Hungary) to an old Saxon family. In his early years, Márai travelled and lived in different cities: Frankfurt, Berlin, Paris and briefly considered writing in German. Finally, he chose his mother language, Hungarian, to write in. He settled in Budapest, Krisztinaváros (1928). In the 1930s, he gained prominence with a precise and clear realist style. He was the first person to write reviews of the work of Kafka.
He wrote very enthusiastically about the Vienna Awards, in which Nazi Germany forced Czechoslovakia and Romania to give back part of the territories which Hungary lost in the Treaty of Trianon. Nevertheless, he was highly critical of the Nazis as such and was considered "profoundly antifascist," a dangerous position to take in wartime Hungary.
His 1942 book Embers (Hungarian title: A gyertyák csonkig égnek, meaning "The Candles Burn Up to the Stump") expresses a nostalgia for the bygone multi-ethnic, multicultural society of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, reminiscent of the works of Joseph Roth. In 2006 an adaptation of this novel for the stage, written by Christopher Hampton, was performed in London [1].
He also disliked the Communist regime that seized power after World War II, and left - or was driven away - in 1948. After living for some time in Italy, Márai settled in the city of San Diego, California, in the United States.
He continued to write in his native language, but was not published in English until the mid-1990s. After his wife died, he retreated more and more into isolation. Márai committed suicide by a gunshot to his head in San Diego in 1989.
Largely forgotten outside of Hungary, his work (consisting of poems, novels, and diaries) has only been recently "rediscovered" and republished in French (starting in 1992), Italian, English, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Icelandic, Korean, and other languages too, and is now considered to be part of the European Twentieth Century literary canon.
[edit] Bibliography
[edit] Translated into English
- Embers (1942, published in English in 2000), Hungarian title: A gyertyák csonkig égnek ISBN 0375707425
- Memoir of Hungary (1971, published in English in 2001), Hungarian title: Föld, föld…! ISBN 9639241105
- Casanova in Bolzano (1940, published in English in 2004), Hungarian title: Vendégjáték Bolzanóban ISBN 0375712968
- The Rebels (1930, published in English in 2007), Hungarian title: A zendülők. ISBN 037540757X
[edit] Gallery
 Statue of Sándor Márai |
 Márai‘s birth-place (today's Mäsiarska Street in Košice) |
 Márai‘s signature |
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 Statue of Sándor Márai |
 Márai‘s memorial on his former home in Krisztinaváros |
[edit] Notes
[edit] External links
- See discussion in the Book Club at Words Without Borders - an online magazine for international literature
- Official Marai site at Knopf, which is releasing Marai's novels in English
- Marai's American Journal - Excerpts (in English) from Marai's final diaries,
- Sándor Márai Blog - a fan blog with news, reviews, links
- Márai at Hunlit
- Márai in Albert Tezla's Hungarian Authors
- IMDB Bio.
- Photo
- Review of Embers
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