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The Glass Room - Simon Mawer
The Glass Room
by: (author)
4.00 5
A New York Times Best-Seller 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... show more
A New York Times Best-Seller 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.
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Format: paperback
ISBN: 9781590513965 (1590513967)
ASIN: 1590513967
Publisher: Other Press
Pages no: 416
Edition language: English
Bookstores:
Community Reviews
DuncanH
DuncanH rated it
1.0 The Glass Room
Reader! Do you want a badly written romance novel with GCSE level attempts at symbolism and ‘depth’? Look no further. Not that this is how The Glass Room is described. If it was I wouldn’t have gone near it. This, after all, is a book shortlisted for The Booker Prize. “Life is like that”, he said, h...
CharlotteBuriedinBooks
CharlotteBuriedinBooks rated it
3.0
Book Club Read - I can't say I enjoyed this book, because I really didn't care for a lot of the characters - in fact most of the characters.The men especially, considering this was written by a man that's quite a feat.A young couple meet an architect while on their honeymoon in Venice, they ask him ...
The City Of Invention
The City Of Invention rated it
4.0 The Glass Room
Set in the period before, during and after the Second World War, The Glass Room tells the story of an ultra-modernist house built by wealthy Czech couple, the Landauers. Herr Landauer owned a company that manufactured cars but since he was Jewish, his comfortable bourgeois life was about to be shatt...
Thewanderingjew
Thewanderingjew rated it
5.0 Glass Room
The Glass RoomSimon MawerThe author has captured the time in Europe, just after World War I when hopes were high for the future, straight through the ensuing decades when hopes were dashed; time travels seamlessly through World War II with the ultimate Communist take-over of several countries and th...
Bettie's Books
Bettie's Books rated it
2.0 The Glass Room
BBC Radio 4 - Book at BedtimeGreta Scacchi reads from the novel by Simon Mawer. It is the beginning of the 1930s and Victor and Liesel Landauer are on honeymoon in Venice. Soon they will return to newly-formed Czechoslovakia, inspired to build an extraordinary family home.Abridged by Jeremy Osborne....
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