Imre

Imre opens as a private confession, a secret memoir addressed to Xavier Mayne and shaped by the hope that its honesty may comfort others trapped by rigid moral codes and misunderstanding. At its heart is a rare, searching portrait of homosexual love as something at once noble, painful, and socially condemned. The narrator looks back on boyhood longing, a first reciprocated love cut short by death, and the lifelong need to wear a mask in a world that mistakes inward truth for shame. He wrestles with the brutal contradiction between desire and public judgment, asking whether what has appeared in every age and among great men can truly be unnatural or sinful. Against this philosophical anguish, the novel traces the intimate friendship between the narrator and Lieutenant Imre von N.... in Szent-Istvánhely, where a chance meeting in a café grows into daily companionship, shared meals, and long conversations about art, politics, science, literature, and Hungary. Their secrecy, their mutual recognition, and Imre's own confession of hidden love deepen the bond into a moving story of secrecy, self-knowledge, and the possibility of tenderness without disguise. This edition has been fully restored with modern typesetting, custom cover design.