Stefan Zweig, Irene Nerimovsky and Sandor Marai

I love these books for the cynical description of human relationships.

Embers: Sandor Marai

Describing the story of Embers is almost to do it a disservice. An elderly aristocratic general, Henrik, invites a childhood friend, Konrad, who disappeared 41 years ago in mysterious circumstances, to dinner in his castle. That's it for action. The meal doubles as a trial of Konrad, an almost mute defendant in the face of Henrik's prosecution, which minutely re-examines their schooldays at a military academy, the years leading up to Konrad's vanishing and his unmilitary character: "One cannot be a musician and a relative of Chopin and escape unpunished." The reason for Konrad's flight, after a shooting party when the general senses that the impecunious Konrad's intended prey has two legs not four, is linked to Krisztina, the rich general's beloved wife. (The Guardian, 5th Jan 2002)

Beware of Pity: Stefan Zweig

His novel Beware of Pity, composed over a period of years and completed in 1938 (there are 11 extant – volumes of notes and drafts that attest to Zweig's painstaking work on his only full-length novel) itself very pointedly has almost nothing to say about contemporary times, on the surface at least. It is the story of a young Austrian cavalry officer, Anton Hofmiller, who befriends a local millionaire, Kekesfalva, and his family, but in particular the old man's crippled daughter, Edith, with terrible consequences. (Guardian, July 2011)

The ball: Irene Nemirovsky

A poisonous mother-daughter bond drives “The Ball,” in which the adolescent protagonist, Antoinette, sabotages the social ambitions of her newly rich parents. With its never-mailed invitations to a party on which all depends, “The Ball” is more like a Maupassant short story than a Balzac novel, except for its ending, whose implacable absence of sentiment seems to have trumped any temptation the author may have had to fulfill genre conventions. (New York Times, 9th March 2008)