Memoir of Hungary

"Sándor Márai is one of the great Hungarian novelists. He was in Hungary during the war, and left in 1948. This book is about a neutral intellectual’s encounter with communism, and it records what he saw as it happened. Whereas Miłosz writes from the present looking back, trying to explain the past, Márai writes as if in the moment itself. His genius is for anecdotes. He tells, for example, the story of an elderly Jewish Hungarian’s first encounter with the Red Army. The man is overjoyed to see the Russians – they have rescued him from the Nazis – and even more enraptured to meet a Russian officer who is Jewish like himself. They embrace – it’s a heartwarming scene – whereupon the Russian turns everyone in the old man’s home to the wall, robs them thoroughly and walks away. It’s tragic and funny at the same time. Márai is of course an anti-Communist, but the book is somehow very unbiased – not vitriol, just description. In some ways he’s as harsh on his own countrymen as on the Russians. Hungarians resist neither the Germans nor the Russians effectively. They too easily give in to persuasion and bribes. But he doesn’t make generalisations, he makes his points by telling stories. There is one about a Hungarian communist coming into a restaurant. Everybody readjusts themselves around this man, and swiftly accepts him as one of them. Difficult and brave. And also confusing: at the time things were much greyer than they seem to be in retrospect. The options were limited. Was it sensible to go to the woods, be a partisan and fight the Communists when you had no chance of winning? Was that a logical thing to do, and the best use of your life and resources? Wasn’t it better to accept the new order and move on? The solution wasn’t obvious, and people chose many different options."