Sándor Márai, like Stefan Zweig, is an author who is receiving more attention in this country, despite being much less well known a name. First there was Embers – a rather conventional and lacklustre novel, I thought – then Conversations in Bolzano (which is sitting, as yet unread on my shelf) and then the excellent The Rebels, all of them published by Penguin.
Now Picador have entered the race with Esther’s Inheritance. It’s a strange novella that centres on the return of the dissolute fantasist Lajos, who is the great love of Esther’s life. Lajos sends Esther a telegram announcing that he will arrive the next day, shattering the comfortable domestic idyl she has created with her cousin.
Despite knowing the Lajos has betrayed her and and her entire family, Esther allows him to come back to cause yet more damage. It’s this knowledge that makes the book interesting: she understands what he wants from her before he arrives, she knows that she will give it to him, and she knows she will receive nothing in return but more bitterness. The centre of the novella is a scene of great intensity in which Esther understands for the first time the scale of Lajos’s betrayal. It’s worth reading for those passages alone.
While it isn’t nearly as interesting a book as The Rebels, Esther’s Inheritance is a still beautifully written and elegant vignette.
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