Embers is a 1942 novel by the Hungarian writer Sándor Márai

Sándor Márai

Sándor Márai was a Hungarian writer and journalist.-Biography:...

. Its original Hungarian title is A gyertyák csonkig égnek, which means "Candles burn until the end". The narrative revolves around a an elderly general who invites an old friend from military school for dinner; the friend had previously disappeared mysteriously for 41 years, and the dinner begins to resemble a trial where the friend is prosecuted for his character traits. The book was published in English in 2000.

Reception

Anna Shapiro reviewed the book for The Observer

The Observer

The Observer is a British newspaper, published on Sundays. In the same place on the political spectrum as its daily sister paper The Guardian, which acquired it in 1993, it takes a liberal or social democratic line on most issues. It is the world's oldest Sunday newspaper.-Origins:The first issue,...

in 2002, and wrote: "Elegiac, sombre, musical, and gripping, Embers is a brilliant disquisition on friendship, one of the most ambitious in literature." Shapiro continued: "About a milieu and values that were already dying before the outbreak of World War II

World War II

World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

, it has the grandeur and sharpness of Jean Renoir

Jean Renoir

Jean Renoir was a French film director, screenwriter, actor, producer and author. As a film director and actor, he made more than forty films from the silent era to the end of the 1960s...

's 1937 movie masterpiece La Grande Illusion

Grand Illusion (film)

Grand Illusion is a 1937 French war film directed by Jean Renoir, who co-wrote the screenplay with Charles Spaak. The story concerns class relationships among a small group of French officers who are prisoners of war during World War I and are plotting an escape.The title of the film comes from a...

, with which it shares, in both oblique and pronounced ways, some of its substance."