The literary discovery of the year.” —Eileen Battersby, "Books of 2014"
“A remarkable narrative, a real treasure, a book everyone should read. The Burning of the World is a work of superb reportage as well as being a non-fiction companion volume to Joseph Roth’s classic The Radetzky March … The Burning of the World is a marvellous discovery with a humility and sense of wonder that places it more than the equal of even Robert Graves’s Good-Bye to All That.” —The Irish Times
“[W]ritten with a painter’s eye for colour … [it] matters not only for its literary qualities but also as an evocation of the Austro-Russian theatre (for which we have very few accounts) during the more mobile opening phase of campaigning, when casualty rates were among the highest of the war. … [a] story not only of madness and massacre but also of regeneration.” —David Stevenson, The Financial Times
“To a certain extent, World War I memoirs written from the ant’s perspective resemble one another, all mud and horror. What makes this one stand out is the author’s painterly eye for detail, his ability to evoke a vanished way of life, and his tone of voice—gentle and civilized but perfectly capable of the occasional sardonic flash.” —Henrik Bering, The Wall Street Journal
“The pages devoted to the subject [of combat] are brilliant…The strength of this book is as an account [of] the effect of war on one sensitive young man and on everything and everybody.” —Charles Moore, The Daily Telegraph
“To be in a war, within it, to know what that means, to understand the appalling and dreadful significance of all that is appalling and dreadful—such was the fate of this gentle Hungarian painter. This book is perilous reading: the reader is invited, along with the writer, the one who remembers, to take part in what happened. But this is what we must do: from sympathy, from compassion, so that the one who truly lived through all of this will not be so utterly, unbearably alone.” —László Krasznahorkai
“One reads with never-ending curiosity and ever deeper emotion these recollections of the first year of World War I on the nearly forgotten eastern front. Here, instead of trenches, there was constant movement. Vast ill-equipped and ill-trained armies composed of multiple nationalities—among them Russians, Cossacks, Caucasians, Asians, Austro-Germans and Reich Germans, Hungarians, Romanians, Poles, Czechs, Slovaks, Croats, Serbs, and Slovenes—massacred each other for causes that few involved could understand.” —István Deák, Columbia University
"The writing detailing the author's experiences in battle has an energy and sense of urgency, and the whole book is filled with the understanding that life would never be the same again...recommended for anyone interested in World War I, war memoirs, and the history of eastern Europe." —Library Journal
"...haunting, heartbreaking, and beautifully written...[Zombory-Moldovan's] relatively short exposure to combat is conveyed with an unforgettable intensity. But this is not another chronicle of trench warfare....This is a deeply moving account of a young man's short but terrible plunge into an inferno." —Booklist, starred review
“The Burning of the World is a compact self-portrait against a background of carnage and disillusionment.” —Larry Rohter, The New York Times
07/01/2014
Zombory-Moldován (1885–1967), a Hungarian painter, was 29 years old and vacationing at the seaside when he learned that the Austro-Hungarian empire had entered the "War to End All Wars," and he had been called to serve in the Hungarian defense forces. The slim volume covers the eight months from the time Zombory-Moldován learned of the war to when he returned from his convalescence, and describes the hopeless conditions the troops faced: poor training, shoddy weapons, and impractical regulations. The writing detailing the author's experiences in battle has an energy and a sense of urgency, and the whole book is filled with the understanding that life would never be the same again. While many World War I veterans wrote memoirs of their life in combat, this one is different for two reasons. First, most accounts tell of war on the western front but this story is about life on the eastern front. Second, the book was translated and published almost 100 years after the beginning of the war—planned as a part of a larger work recounting the painter's life. The material was passed along to several generations of family before the author's grandson translated and published it. VERDICT This book is recommended for anyone interested in World War I, war memoirs, and the history of eastern Europe.—Jason Martin, Stetson Univ. Lib., DeLand, FL
2014-06-17
A recently discovered manuscript by a Hungarian artist provides detailed memories of World War I, close to the ground and close to the front.Edited and translated by the author’s grandson, this memoir—likely never intended for publication—covers eight months that would shatter, topple and transform the world of the 29-year-old artist in a country to which he returned home a stranger. It begins with him on vacation with friends, an idyll interrupted by the news that war has been declared and he has been conscripted into the army. “There had been no war in Hungary for almost seventy years,” writes the author. “This was the twentieth century! Europe at equilibrium in the era of enlightenment and democratic humanism. It seemed impossible that a dispute should be decided by fighting.” Though he declared war was “an anachronism,” it is the belief that the era of warfare was over that now seems quaint, and the soldier soon found himself in the midst of the unthinkable violence of the war.Badly wounded three months into his service, he was sent to the hospital and then home, a changed man in a world he no longer understood and where he could never again feel at home. “[S]uffering and the fear of death—indeed, death itself—look different from the perspective of the hinterland than they do to someone taking part,” he writes. Eventually, the author attempted to resume his life and return to his art among people who did not share his life-changing experiences. “I just wanted, like a humble little brook, to join in the great swelling flow of life,” yet, as his account suggests, neither he nor his art could ever be the same again.A personal footnote to the war’s exhaustive history that makes that history come alive.
