In the Footsteps of the Gods - A Novel of a Journey -1926 (Extracts)
In the Footsteps of the Gods - A Novel of a Journey -1926 (Extracts)

Summary/Abstract: Sándor Márai was 26, a rising star as a journalist, a columnist for several newspapers in Hungary and abroad, when he travelled to the Near and Middle East from March to July of 1926. The articles he then wrote for the liberal daily Újság appeared in 1927 in book form, under the title Istenek nyomában: Egy utazás regénye (In the Footsteps of the Gods: A Novel of a Journey). The accompanying photographs, presumably taken by the author himself, were left out of the second,revised, edition published in 1937. The stops on this journey were Marseille, Egypt, Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, Turkey and Greece. Márai was a supremely gifted travel writer. Even after the passing of eighty years his vignettes are as alive as if written today: fresh, pertinent, of great political insight and, all too often, prophetic. The book maintains throughout a balance between reportage and the personal, and the last chapter, a letter written to a fictitious addressee in Paris, raises issues that were to preoccupy Márai throughout his long life. Among the deities of the ancient Orient he seeks answers to the questions haunting Europe after the nightmare of the First World War: do the ancient gods survive in any manner, do they have any relevance for the generations to come? It is a travel book of profound resignation that remains pertinent to this day.

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