$15.95
ISBN-13: 9781590513965
Availability: On Our Shelves Now
Published: Other Press, 10/2009
May 2013 Selection : Honeymooners Viktor and Liesel Landauer are filled with the optimism and
cultural vibrancy of central Europe of the 1920s when they meet
modernist architect Rainer von Abt. He builds for them a home to embody
their exuberant faith in the future, and the Landauer House becomes an
instant masterpiece. Viktor and Liesel, a rich Jewish mogul married to a
thoughtful, modern gentile, pour all of their hopes for their marriage
and budding family into their stunning new home, filling it with
children, friends, and a generation of artists and thinkers eager to
abandon old-world European style in favor of the new and the
avant-garde. But as life intervenes, their new home also brings out
their most passionate desires and darkest secrets. As Viktor searches
for a warmer, less challenging comfort in the arms of another woman, and
Liesel turns to her wild, mischievous friend Hana for excitement, the
marriage begins to show signs of strain. The radiant honesty and
idealism of 1930 quickly evaporate beneath the storm clouds of World War
II. As Nazi troops enter the country, the family must leave their old
life behind and attempt to escape to America before Viktor's Jewish
roots draw Nazi attention, and before the family itself dissolves. As
the Landauers struggle for survival abroad, their home slips from hand
to hand, from Czech to Nazi to Soviet possession and finally back to the
Czechoslovak state, with new inhabitants always falling under the
fervent and unrelenting influence of the Glass Room. Its crystalline
perfection exerts a gravitational pull on those who know it, inspiring
them, freeing them, calling them back, until the Landauers themselves
are finally drawn home to where their story began. Brimming with
barely contained passion and cruelty, the precision of science, the wild
variance of lust, the catharsis of confession, and the fear of failure -
the Glass Room contains it all.