The Rebels by Sandor Marai – Review

The Rebels by Sandor Marai

In May 1918, in a Hungarian town whose men have all gone to war, four high school graduates face the grim prospect of a similar fate. Drawn together by their mutual, unspoken fear, they create a fantasy world where they flout their broken society’s conventions and share ‘the delight of pulling a huge ridiculous face at the world behind its unsuspecting back, perhaps for the last time’. Naturally, their escapism is doomed, and indeed the narrative is haunted by such a heavy sense of foreboding that it occasionally slips into melodrama. Nevertheless it’s a powerful tale of innocence lost, and Marai (who has produced a substantial body of work but is only now being rediscovered in English) writes with a prescience that seems almost otherworldly. One suspects there is much more to be unearthed.

Review: The Rebels by Sandor Marai | Books | The Observer.