Embers

In a crumbling Hungarian castle at the foot of the Carpathians, a retired general named Henrik waits for a guest he has not seen in 41 years. Konrad, his closest childhood friend, fled the country the day after a 1900 morning hunt that ended their friendship and left Henrik's wife Krisztina silent until her death. Across a single long candlelit dinner the two old men finally talk about Krisztina, the hunt, and the question of whether friendship and betrayal are two sides of the same act. Márai wrote the book in 1942 and it was lost for half a century before a 1998 Italian rediscovery returned it to print.