Sandor Marai 1900-1989
“Poor Sandor Marai. Born in Hungary in 1900, poet, journalist, playwright, novelist, and the author of more than 60 books, he spent the second world war in hiding from the Nazis. After the war, when the communists replaced them, he went into exile, first in Italy, then in America. His books, written in Hungarian, were almost forgotten until, with the collapse of the Soviet Union, they began to be reprinted and, over this past decade, translated into other languages and much acclaimed. Marai knew nothing of this new twist of fate. In 1989, old, poor and solitary since the death of his wife, he shot himself in San Diego, taking care to alert the emergency services first, so that his body would be found and removed”.
(The Sunday Times, by John Spurling)
