Portraits Of A Marriage

Description

A rediscovered masterwork from famed Hungarian novelist Sandor Marai, "Portraits of a Marriage "tracks the lifelong entanglement of a man and two women haunted by class differences and misdirected longings. Peter and Ilonka are a wealthy couple whose outwardly perfect marriage is undone by secrets. The insecure Ilonka believes she can never be elegant and refined enough for her husband, while Peter has long been tormented by his forbidden love for Judit, a peasant and servant in his childhood home. What Judit longs for most, however, is freedom from the constraints of the society that has ensnared all three in a vortex of love and loss. Set against the backdrop of Hungary between the wars, in a world on the verge of dramatic change, this exquisite novel offers further posthumous evidence of Marai s brilliance. Translated from the Hungarian by George Szirtes"

Reviews

""Portraits of a Marriage "is brilliant in the acuity of its observations, its unremitting intelligence. . . . Marai gives voice to a vanished world in a chorus that is both eulogy and manifesto." --"The New York Times Book Review""Superbly readable. . . . Deeply satisfying. . . . Like Tolstoy, he has a kind of genius for the small touches that define a marriage, and also like Tolstoy, he is brilliant at dissecting the tiny differences that separate one layer of society from another." --"The Daily Beast ""With this phenomenal novel, our conviction is confirmed: he ranks as one of the twentieth century's greatest novelists." --"Booklist ""A cubist portrait of a harsh love and a dying society, elegantly paced and delightfully contradictory. . . . With each new voice [Marai] builds suspense and reveals new layers and twists to this tale. Suffused with nostalgia and regret, the book evokes and examines both the nature of longing and the decline of a great empire." --"Publishers Weekly "(starred review)