Poetic, ironic, sometimes wistful, but always with a crystal-clear view of a European author living in exile, Sándor Márai describes his America – from New York via Miami to San Francisco. Because of rejecting communism, the writer left Hungary in 1948 and tried to find work and to start a new life in the socalled New World. Even then, he forsaw the developments the USA and its cities would go through during the following decades. Today, more than 50 years later, we read Márai´s masterly written literary essays, his deep insights into American culture, its people´s peculiarity and realize admiringly: »he was right«.
- Márai´s novel »Embers« has been a longseller since its spectacular rediscovery in the 1990ies
- Numerous novels, stories, essays and plays have been translated in 15 languages altogether
Sándor Márai, one of the most important Hungarian writers of the 20th century, was born in Kaschau on the 11th of April 1900. The restless freethinker grew up in an intellectual no man´s land of the rootless German-Hungarian bourgeoisie and orientated himself to contemporary writers such as Lasker- Schüler, Trakl and Kafka. He has worked and lived in various European countries such as Germany, France and Italy, but not without re t u rning again and again to Hungary, because of his deep attachment to his mother-tongue. In 1948 he finally left his home together with his wife and son in order to emigrate via Canada to California. Due to his loneliness and grief after the death of his wife and son, he committed suicide on the 22th of Febru a ry 1989 in San Diego, USA.